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seriousficSpider-Man ran. He felt nothing as he ran up a ray and threw himself off it, flying for hundreds of feet toward the escaping Hobgoblin. He missed, losing Harry in a smog of afterburner exhaust, but fired a webline up to strike the underside of the glider. It stretched taut and pulled Spider-Man along.
Hobgoblin was tripped up by the additional weight. He turned his head to see Spider-Man coming along for the ride. Opened his helmet in disbelief to see it with his own eyes. Annoying little pest. Couldn’t even stay behind and mourn properly. With baleful determination, he shut the helmet and dipped the glider. They rushed down toward the water of New York bay. “Let’s see how well you water-skate!”
Spider-Man shot a second webline which hit the back of the Hobgoblin’s helmet. Pulling on it tilted Hobgoblin’s head back and changed their course upward. Spider-Man bounced once off the rushing water, but didn’t even notice it.
“Didn't I tell you not to touch her, Harry? Didn’t I tell you!?”
Harry chucked a pumpkin bomb over his shoulder. “I knew alright! Why do you think I did it?”
Spider-Man extinguished the flaming spark on the stem with a web. The bomb splashed harmlessly into the ocean.
They reached the coastline. Hobgoblin accelerated toward a skyscraper, veering aside at the last moment. Spider-Man let go of the webline and cannonballed through the glass window, hitting the ground running. Hobgoblin was flying alongside the floor he was on; Spider-Man sprinted until he had outpaced Harry then made an abrupt left turn. He crashed through another window and broadsided the Hobgoblin. The two men duked it out as the glider spun out of control.
Hobgoblin drove a vicious elbow into Peter’s stomach, then hit the boosters. Spider-Man was jerked off the glider. He fired another webline onto the glider, sensing that he’d hit on a strategy Harry couldn’t counter. As they flew up the skyscraper, Spider-Man ran up the face of the building and delivered a dropkick to Hobgoblin’s back.
Hobgoblin threw three pumpkin bombs back. Spider-Man let go of the webline and caught it with his foot as he fired out webbing with both hands, putting out the grenades. They still hit his body hard as bricks. He didn’t feel the pain. He could feel Mary-Jane’s hand on his as she begged him not to let her go, the soft press of her lips against him…
Hobgoblin saw a Medevac chopper below. He plunged the glider into a nosedive. “You oughta get a buzz out of this! Ha! I kill myself!”
Peter kicked at the webline on his foot with his other foot. The helicopter rose swiftly to meet them. Peter could hear its angry buzz. He kicked hard at the line, ripping off part of his boot, and he and Harry passed on either side of the helicopter. Spider-Man immediately shot a webline up, catching the landing skid and swinging into Hobgoblin.
“Allow me.” Spider-Man grabbed Hobgoblin by the satchel and shot a webline up to a smokestack. They swung toward it with seeming leisure, until Spider-Man threw Hobgoblin ahead into the smokestack and swung into him with a knee strike that knocked him through the wall and inside the flue.
Hobgoblin crashed into the opposite side of the smokestack and bounced off, landing on his glider which had flown down the smokestack. He hit Spider-Man with a netgun built into his glider. Spider-Man flew off the smokestack and landed on hard gravel, trapped inside a steel-mesh net. He tugged on the net but only succeeded in cutting up his fingers.
Hobgoblin casually straightened his satchel, pulled out a pumpkin bomb, lit it, then mimed throwing it at Spider-Man. With the same sarcastic casualness, he straight-armed it into the hole he’d left in the smokestack. It rung its way down the flue, exploding near the bottom. Hobgoblin gave the smokestack a push towards Spider-Man.
”Timber!”
Spider-Man struggled to get out of the way of the smokestack, but the damn thing was huge. Hundreds of feet high and twenty feet in diameter. He fired out a webline and used it to pull himself along the ground until he his spider-sense stopped. He was right under the spot on the smokestack where the Hobgoblin had been knocked through. As soon as the smokestack landed, he began cutting the net against the ripped metal where the Hobgoblin had taken that oh-so-satisfying hit.
Hobgoblin circled overhead like an angry wasp, arming the rockets on his glider. “She’s waiting for you, Pete!” he screamed as he launched missile after missile into the smokestack.
Peter saw the far end of the smokestack explode. The flue acted like a giant wind tunnel, sending the searing air and shrapnel against him. He had already cut through three links in the net. He redoubled his efforts as another missile exploded, closer. And closer. And closer.
An explosion fifteen feet away had just sent particles of debris pinging off his eyelenses when he cut the last line. He shucked off the entire net and backflipped away from the next missile, which exploded closer enough to hit him like a punch across the jaw. He landed and went on instinct, running the other way even as the next missile hit…
Hobgoblin howled in frustration as Spider-Man ran out of the other end of the fallen smokestack, just ahead of the final explosion. “I knew I should’ve fired at both ends.”
Spider-Man had woven a bag of webbing during his run. He used it now to scoop up gravel and then flung it at the Hobgoblin. Harry obliterated it with his glove blaster, but the gravel still ended up in his glider’s turbine. His vehicle sputtered and drooped as Spider-Man ran toward him. Harry tried to correct, then drew a pumpkin bomb. He just had it lit when Spider-Man tackled him into the gravel. The primed bomb bounced off the glider and fell to the ground, where it exploded to no one’s notice. Spider-Man was already grappling with Hobgoblin down a slope in the weed-and-gravel landscape, punching him like he would never stop.
“Why aren’t you smiling for me, Harry? You were smiling for her!”
His spider-sense rang as the glider swooped toward him. Spider-Man leapt out of the way a second too late; he just had to get one last punch in. The glider’s spikes slashed across his side, starting a slow trickle of blood down his hip and leg. Hobgoblin mounted the glider and hit the flamethrower, fire shooting from the gargoyle’s mouth like dragon’s breath. Spider-Man rolled out of the way, returned fire with some webballs.
Hobgoblin was jerked back as if hit by rubber bullets. He splayed his fingers, displaying mini-grenades between each digit. Spider-Man dodged again as they flew at him. He evaded most of the detonations, but one drove gravel into his forearm like sharp nails. He landed hard on his side as Hobgoblin flew over him, going so fast that the gravel parted like sand. Spider-Man shot out a webline and was painfully dragged across the gravel before getting airborne.
Peter wasn’t giving Hobgoblin another chance to shake him loose. He fired another webline into a building and held both tightly. Hobgoblin was forced to bank. He flew into a squat foundry, hitting it so hard the windows all shattered. As he was recovering, Spider-Man jumped his shoulders, straddling them, and began punching Hobgoblin in the head.
Hobgoblin flew into a billboard advertising the industrial park’s product. The impact knocked Spider-Man off. He hung on the edge of the hole as Hobgoblin turned around for another pass. The drill bits on his glider spun. Spider-Man threw himself backward and wove a quick web over the hole. Hobgoblin ripped through it, pulling the billboard off its supports in the process. Spider-Man quickly fixes the supports with webbing, vulnerable as Hobgoblin attacked from behind.
Spider-Man let it plummet down, crush a truck offloading supplies. He’d managed to grab hold of the glider. Hobgoblin tilted it from side to side, trying to throw him off. Spider-Man swung up and landed perfectly on the glider behind Hobgoblin. He began leveling Hobgoblin with left and rights.
“I loved her, Harry.” His voice was small, pathetic, in dire contrast to the viciousness of the blows he launched. “I loved her.”
“Call me the Hobgoblin.” Harry tried to counter with a back elbow, but Peter was ready for him. Spider-Man shifted his weight to the left side of the glider. The glider shifted off-course, decapitating a four-headed street light. The four lamps crunched a section of chainlink fence as the two flew over it, into the city.
Hobgoblin threw a pumpkin bomb into a building. It exploded, tearing apart the cornice of the roof. The debris ricocheted off his armor, but cut deeply into Spider-Man. Hobgoblin shoved a lit pumpkin bomb into the wounded man’s arms, pushing him off the glider. Peter unthinkingly followed his spider-sense and flung the bomb aside. It shattered a window and exploded, showering the night sky with flaming debris. Peter’s scream joined those of the people inside the building. It seemed to be given concrete form in the webline that launched out and caught the glider once more.
“You never give up!” Harry roared, firing goblin sparks backward. “You just never give up!”
One glanced off Spider-Man’s skull. It cracked one of his eyelenses. Hobgoblin roared in triumph, took careful aim at the limp Spider-Man. Then he saw the sky bridge he was headed for out of the corner of his eye. Harry brought the glider to a sudden stop. Spider-Man zoomed underneath it, then above it in an arc, his webline bringing him full circle back on top of Harry. He landed with an elbow into Harry’s shoulder, dislocating it.
Harry screamed, turning into the words only as a last resort “I won’t be caged like an animal!” He hit the nitro, trying to dislodge Spider-Man. Peter just grabbed Hobgoblin and held his head up. The helmet grinded against the underside of the bridge they were passing under.
“Don’t worry, I have other plans.”
Harry lit a pumpkin bomb. He didn’t throw it. He just held on. Peter realized his intent and grabbed for it. Hobgoblin held it away with one arm, held Peter with the other. Finally, Spider-Man ducked behind Harry and his armor.
The explosion blasted them in opposite directions. Spider-Man had just enough energy to fire a webline and jerk them against each other, a last attack that did as much damage to himself as Harry. They fell together, crashing through a skylight and the floor underneath before they settled in a junkyard of glass, wood, and plaster.
It took a moment for Peter to realize where he was, where Harry had taken him. Osborn manor. The entire place shrieked and groaned with the aftereffects of Doctor Octopus’s visit, no doubt long since evacuated. Peter got up painfully. He couldn’t see through his mask. He pulled it off.
“This was never about masks. Never about Spider-Man and Hobgoblin... It's always been about two men… named Peter Parker…”
Harry snarled groggily as Peter wrenched off his helmet.
“And Harry Osborn.”
More of the floor they’d fallen through crumbled, dripping to the ground now. They were in a narrow hallway, lined with portraits. Peter ripped apart one of Norman. “Was it worth it!?”
Harry stood, spitting blood. “Of course it was. Now you know what it’s like to lose someone.” He pointed, his glove glowing toxically. “Watch the birdie.”
Goblin sparks carved their way into Peter’s stomach, dashing him against the far side of the hallway. Harry laughed uproariously as he limped his way to the groaning Peter, blasting chunks out of the ceiling like he was a wild west cowboy. His last shot shattered a window, letting in the howling wind.
“Would you like to know what her last moments were like?” He reached for Peter. “It’s not the fall that kills you, ya know…”
Peter slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me!”
“…big splat at the end,” Harry finished woozily. He charged his glove again. “C’mon, it’ll make you a lot closer as a couple.”
Peter grabbed his pointer finger before he could fire. “Not polite to point…”
The sound of Harry’s finger breaking was crisp and clean and sweeter than a symphony. Harry fell back. Peter followed him, staggering drunkenly, webbing up his wounds. He reached the next room in time to see a mirror rippling like quicksilver. Peter stepped through it to see frightful masks, Norman’s masks, lining every wall. Harry’s voice echoed through the secret lair, seeming to come from the army of masks.
“Do you like this place, Peter? Dad did. When I was a child, anytime I did anything wrong, he locked me down here and said to wait for the goblins. That they’d teach me a lesson.”
Peter hit the incoming pumpkin bomb with webbing, welding it to the far wall. The explosion rattled every mask from its place. In the chaos, Harry’s face was almost indistinguishable from the fright-masks as it lurched out of the darkness, talons extended from a clawed glove. Peter plucked a mask from the air and used it to block the talons. Harry’s next punch shattered the mask and sent Peter flying through a wall, into a normal kitchenette. Peter sprawled against the pantry as another pumpkin bomb shot through the hole in the wall and crashed into the glass-doored oven.
Peter rolled for cover behind the island. Nothing happened, except for a faint hissing sound. He reared his head to see green gas pouring out of the oven like a mist, covering the ground and reaching up, reaching up to his nostrils, with sudden speed…
“How do you like my Goblin Gas?”
Peter shook his head. Dizziness was overwhelming him, bringing confusion to the forefront of his mind. He heard broken tiles crunching underfoot. Looked up to see not Harry, but Mary-Jane stepping out of the destruction intruding onto the formerly pristine kitchen.
“MJ!?”
Pain forgotten, he strode toward her.
“No! Wait! Don’t come any closer…” she cried.
”Mary-Jane, what’s wrong?”
”Don’t let him get me! Help me! Save me from…”
Norman Osborn leered out of the shadows behind her. “The Goblin.”
Peter could do nothing but watch in horror as Norman calmly broke Mary-Jane’s neck. He screamed: it might have been a word, a name, or it might just have been the most violent protest he was capable of at the moment.
The entire room exploded, proceeded only by the telltale hollow sound of pumpkin bombs rebounding off the weird surfaces. Peter was bracketed from side to side, finally slamming down in front of pointed goblin boots. He looked up as two feet in high-heels joined the first set. Saw Mary-Jane and Harry locked in an embrace. Harry’s left arm was wrapped around her back, his right cradling her head. Harry broke the kiss and looked at Peter in disgust.
”Hey, roomie, can’t you knock?”
He let go of Mary-Jane’s head, which flopped backwards to look at him upside-down. “Jesus, Peter, you’re such a perv.”
Peter pushed himself away from elbows and feet. He put his hand down in a puddle of wet, sticky blood. Turned to see his uncle Ben bleeding out on the linoleum tiles.
Ben’s voice was so cold that it could only have come from the grave. “Why, Peter? Why couldn’t you save me? All you had to do was trip the guy? Hold the elevator?”
”I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
”Sorry!? I’ll never see my wife again! Is sorry supposed to make that better!?”
Blinding pain worked its way across Peter’s back. He reached a hand back there and it came away with blood. He’d been cut.
A silver dagger swung, like a pendulum suspended by invisible wires, in front of him. “I nearly killed you with this dagger, once. Remember, Pete? Time to finish the job.”
Peter couldn’t see Harry, only his own blood as Harry anointed himself with the blood left on the dagger.
The Green Goblin armor grew out of the hallucinatory Ben, shredding through his skin as he laughed at Peter’s blood. The laughing mouth grew and grew until it had swallowed up Ben’s head, replacing it with Norman’s.
”Oh, Peter,” Norman said, as calm and cool as a reptile as more cuts spontaneously started to bleed across Peter’s body. “This is really a great moment. My son, the fruit of my loins, the apple of my eye, is about to finish what I started. I think I'm getting misty. Because even though Harry's throwing the punches, I'm the one pulling the strings.”
He lifted his hands and Peter saw wires running from his fingers into six Harry Osborns, all mad, some gibbering, some laughing, some just smiling. Each had his own silver knife. As one, they surged toward Peter.
Peter closed his eyes, despite the unbearable tension trying to force them open. He let his spider-sense take over, raising over the pain from his wounds and the constant pang in his chest that was Mary-Jane, until his eyes shot open and he saw Harry bringing the dagger down.
Peter grabbed Harry’s arm by the wrist, stopping the blade an inch from his eye. “Osborn…” He threw Harry into Norman, breaking the apparition apart like vapor. “Shut up.”
He stalked toward Harry, who reached deep into his satchel – “Everyone always loved you more! Mary-Jane! My father! Everyone!” - and pulled out one last pumpkin bomb. Peter stopped short. “I’ll show you what love is!”
Peter slowly relaxed his clenched fist until he had his pointer and pinky out, middle fingers curled. “Then let me show you what hate is.”
He covered the bomb in webbing, sticking it to Harry’s hand. Harry frenetically tried to shake it loose until Peter struck him in the throat, leaving him gagging on his own blood, and slapped the stem down. “You're doing a great job, Harry!” Peter said, jubilantly half-mad, lit only by the glow from the sparking stem. “Your dad would have impaled himself on his glider by now!”
Harry screamed, frothing blood, as Peter punched him in the chest. He flew backwards, struck the wall, and the pumpkin bomb went off. Harry disappeared in a burst of armor and flame, leaving a jagged scar in the wall.
Peter stood, breathing hard, swallowing his adrenaline rush. On unsteady legs he walked back into the half-destroyed kitchen, got a fancy glass from the cupboard, filled it with water, and splashed his face. The second time he filled it, he drained it the more traditional way. That left blood on the lip of the glass. He dropped it, let it shatter like everything else.
“Mary-Jane,” he said, closing his eyes. He wished the hallucinations would come back. He wished he could see her again, even in a nightmare. Where would she be now? In an ambulance? In a morgue? Or like Harry, still on the ground, still dead where she laid… “Harry,” he said, a weak groan.
Forcing himself to stay on his feet, he dragged himself to the hole in the wall. It threaded back into the lair, where rows upon rows of green vials piled on top of each other like raindrops caught in flight. Peter forced a leg into the darkness, feeling for Harry’s body. Something crunched underfoot. It sounded like… glass.
“You thought it would be that easy, bug?”
Peter followed the trail of empty vials to Harry. Bloodied and burnt from the explosion, armor stripped away, both hands full of syringes. He pressed them into the sides of his neck. Before Peter could stop him, successive bursts of pneumatic injections rocked Harry like a firing squad’s bullets. He had overdosed on the goblin serum.
“It’s never that easy.”
Blood vessels popped up beneath Harry's briefly translucent skin, becoming engorged and dilated. The veins continued to swell, racing up his head, then branching out over his face, chest, and arms like an instant network of varicose veins. His eyes glowed green. He screamed and laughed as his skin darkened to green. “No more games, Peter. Say hello to my father for me.”
“Tell him yourself.“ Peter ran the Goblin down, raining punches into his midsection at a machine-gun pace. The Goblin didn’t move an inch, but his backhand sent Peter across the room.
Peter barely had time to duck before the Goblin was upon him again, punch tearing down the wall he had impacted like a wrecking ball. Peter came up with an uppercut that earned him nothing more than a smile. The Goblin ran him through the wall before throwing him into open air, tearing down a row of serum before denting the metal wall.
The Goblin’s feet splashed across the floor polluted by spilled serum. Peter tried to take him by surprise with a punch, but the Goblin caught it and snapped his wrist like a twig. Peter would’ve fallen to his knees, but the Goblin threw him against the wall and delivered punch after punch to Peter’s chest until he drove Spider-Man through the wall. Peter couldn’t take anymore. He stumbled away, nursing his ribs. The Goblin followed at a leisurely pace. Peter looked up ahead. And he saw what Harry had been talking to earlier.
”Oh my god…”
Norman Osborn’s corpse was crucified to the wall, an unadorned prototype glider protruding from his chest like the Spear of Destiny.
“That… is God!” The Goblin forced his way through the too-small hole Peter had made. In his hand was the blood-stained dagger.
Peter worked fast. He pulled the glider out of Norman’s body, turned, knelt, balanced it on one knee as he accessed the console on top of it. The Goblin laughed as he got closer, swinging the dagger in a long loping arc. Peter brought up the nitro-acceleration test and looked up. The Goblin was right in his sights. Peter smiled through blood-streaked teeth. “Like father, like son.”
The glider shot blue flame from its exhaust pipe and hurled toward the Goblin at supersonic speed. The Goblin’s eyes widened. It rammed into his midsection, carrying him off the ground and toward the bank of security monitors. The Goblin looked over his shoulder at the wall rushing up to greet him…
”Oh.”
The monitors cracked, went to static when the Goblin hit. A mouthful of blood shot from his mouth and splattered the still-rocketing glider that was pinning him in place.
“I guess a goblin can’t catch,” Peter said as he picked up Harry’s dagger. Slowly, weakly, he pulled Harry’s head up by the hair and held the dagger at his throat. He pressed, was startled by the trickle of blood that emerged. It was dark. Almost brown. Not like blood at all, really.
Peter watched the blood running down Harry’s pale throat and saw Mary-Jane’s hair. That had been red. Red like candy, so red it hadn’t even seemed real.
Peter screamed as he brought the dagger down.
The_Lurker
Date: 2009-09-28 09:17 am (UTC)Like the little nods to different s-m canons. I also like the nods to other fandoms ( if i didn't just imagine them, lol. Buffy, Blade, Psycho...okay the Norman's body thing was freakin' awesome!).
Not to be a dirty, dirty bitch or anything, but in paragraphs 12 through 20, you use the word smokestack 13 times. Chimney, pipe or stack can also be used.
The blood on the drinking glass made me go: "CLONE SAGA!" LOL!!!
Hoping Pete doesn't kill Harry in (relatively speaking) cold blood.Damn, i wish SM3 was this fic instead of...of...that other thing it was, you know?