Ben's driving skill wasn't an exaggeration. He really was that sharp behind the wheel.
The problem was, the Green Goblin was riding a flying machine.
A flying machine with weapons.
The machine guns mounted on the front of the glider opened fire, rounds hammering against the SUV's body. Fortunately, they were driving an armored vehicle, so the bullets didn't get through.
But one of the tires blew out.
The SUV began to slip out of Ben's control.
At high speed, the vehicle spun across the street, finally slamming into a fire hydrant before coming to a shuddering stop. White smoke poured from the crumpled hood.
Ben kicked the door open, grabbed a dazed Eddie from the passenger seat, and dragged him out. The two of them stumbled toward the nearest police line.
"Cough... Uncle Ben, where did this freak come from?" Eddie wiped blood from his forehead, but even then, he kept one hand clamped protectively over the camera hanging from his chest.
"No idea. But apparently, telling the truth has made a lot of people angry."
Ben drew the Glock from his belt and chambered a round.
He knew a handgun probably wouldn't do much against armor like that.
But he wasn't going to stand there and wait to die.
"Still running?" The Green Goblin slowly descended from the sky on his glider.
A blade slid out from his armor as he advanced on them.
"You destroyed my life's work with your reporting. Now I'm going to cut your throat open piece by piece and show you the cost."
Just as the Green Goblin was about to strike—
A web-line snapped onto his wrist.
"The cost? Who exactly is paying the cost here, you overgrown scallion? Are you trying to stop this man from making dinner tonight?"
Peter dropped from the sky mid-quips, both feet slamming squarely into the Green Goblin's chest.
Caught off guard, the Green Goblin was kicked more than a dozen yards backward and crashed into Ben's ruined SUV.
"Who are you?!" the Goblin snarled, scrambling back up and glaring into the air.
He saw a figure crouched on top of a streetlight, wearing a red-and-blue suit with a white spider emblem across the chest.
And not just him.
"Thwip! Thwip!"
Two more web-lines shot in.
Gwen, in her black-and-white hooded suit, Ghost-Spider, and Cindy, in her red-and-black uniform, Silk, landed on the walls to Peter's left and right.
The three of them had the Green Goblin surrounded.
"Who are you?" the Goblin narrowed his eyes at them.
He suspected these three had something to do with him.
Maybe even with his super-spiders.
"Us?" Peter tilted his head from the streetlight. "We're New York's friendly neighborhood problem-solvers. Also, just so you know, flying skateboards are not street legal in this city."
Behind them, Eddie and Ben were staring.
"It's the spider-people who saved me in Brooklyn!" Eddie said excitedly, lifting his camera and snapping photo after photo.
Ben, meanwhile, stared hard at the red-and-blue figure.
For some reason, that young man gave him an incredibly strong sense of familiarity. He couldn't explain it, but the feeling was there.
"You reckless little insects!" the Green Goblin snarled. "If you want to play hero, I'll send you to Hell so you can fight crime there!"
He twisted his wrist and pressed a control built into his armor.
The glider that had stopped in the distance roared to life. Blades sprang from its underside as it shot toward Gwen with a shrieking cutting charge.
"Watch out!" Cindy shouted.
Gwen was the most agile of them. She flipped backward, dodging the glider's charge and letting it crash straight into the wall. Cindy immediately webbed the annoying flying machine in place, sealing it so it couldn't break free.
Meanwhile, Peter went straight into hand-to-hand combat with the Green Goblin.
Peter had tremendous strength and fast reflexes, but he still lacked structured combat training.
The Green Goblin, after inhaling the enhancement gas, had strength comparable to Peter's. Worse, he retained Norman Osborn's cruel, cunning combat instincts. With that metal exoskeleton layered over him, Peter's punches didn't do nearly as much damage as he hoped.
"Not bad!" the Goblin roared. "But I'm stronger!"
He tanked one of Peter's uppercuts, grabbed Peter's wrist with crushing force, then drove a knee into Peter's stomach.
Peter took the hit and nearly threw up.
It was the hardest blow he'd taken since becoming Spider-Man.
The Green Goblin used the momentum to hurl him into a shop window, shattering the glass.
"Spider-Man!"
Gwen and Cindy moved at once, trying to restrain the Goblin.
But the Green Goblin had a counter ready.
"Enjoy this."
He pulled a disc-shaped device from behind his back and slammed it onto the ground.
A high-frequency sonic pulse erupted instantly, leaving all three of them unable to fight back.
The Green Goblin laughed wildly and knocked the three of them away one after another.
Even Ben and Eddie's handguns were useless. Their shots against him might as well have been party poppers.
As for Clark—
Of course he saw everything.
He saw Peter and the others getting overwhelmed.
He saw the Green Goblin chasing his father and his friend.
He had only wanted to see how long the three of them could hold out.
But it seemed they could handle regular criminals well enough, while true supervillains were still a bit much.
If he had to grade their performance, he'd call them the Super Vegeta Trio.
They looked powerful.
Then they went down very quickly.
Just as Clark was about to drop down and end the whole thing, his body suddenly froze.
A terrifying peal of thunder rolled in from the southwest.
Clark turned his head and looked thousands of miles away, toward New Mexico.
A hammer fell from the sky and slammed into the outskirts of a small town, forming a sizable crater.
"Is that... Mjolnir? Thor's already been banished to Earth? This world really is interesting. Not quite the way I remember it."
But now was not the time to worry about a useless hammer.
It was time for a hero's entrance.
"Norman Osborn," Clark said quietly, "you picked the wrong target for revenge."
Boom!
Without any extra movement, Clark launched himself from the top of a building at terrifying speed.
Down on the street, the Green Goblin had defeated all three spider-heroes and was preparing to finish them.
He swung his blade forward, already imagining the sight of cutting them apart.
Then the blade suddenly snapped away.
He looked down.
A single finger had stopped it in front of Peter.
"What?!"
The Green Goblin felt danger seize his whole body.
He looked up and saw a tall man in a deep blue suit with a vivid red S emblazoned across his chest.
At some point, the man had appeared directly in front of him.
His eyes were calm.
In that moment, it was as if Clark had switched personalities completely.
"You like making noise with high-frequency sonic weapons, don't you?" Clark asked, voice perfectly even.
The Green Goblin's eyes widened.
It was him.
As someone who knew what had happened across New York, Norman knew exactly who this was.
The S-man.
The figure New York had practically started worshiping.
The monster who could create storms with his body alone.
For one instant, pure terror overwhelmed the madness of the Goblin persona.
He tried to retreat on instinct.
But there was nowhere to go.
Clark looked at him like he was a circus clown.
Then he simply waved a hand.
The Green Goblin, armor and all, was swatted away by that casual motion.
He flew sideways so fast he left a blur in the air, smashing through the walls of three stores in a row before finally embedding himself in the reinforced vault door of a bank.
Whether he was alive or dead was impossible to tell.