Chapter 18: "The Goblin in the Boardroom"
In which New York's criminal elite realize they've poked the spider one too many times.
As Spider-Man vanished into the shadows like a dramatic ninja powered by one-liners and acrobatics, the silence he left behind lingered.
It wasn't just any silence.
It was the kind that comes when something inside people shifts a little—like someone hit the pause button on the world just long enough for everyone to think.
The cops stayed where they were, still processing what had just happened. No one holstered their weapons. No one moved toward Supercharger, who lay unconscious and groaning. They just stared at the empty space where Spider-Man had been.
A few of the civilians stepped forward from behind the barricade. Whispers fluttered through the group like wind rustling paper.
"Did he just… call out anti-mutant bias?"
"Yeah. And he was right."
"I mean… I never really thought about it like that."
One lady pulled her teenage son closer. "He saved lives tonight. That's what matters."
A construction worker near the front scratched his head. "Man's got jokes and morals. Wild combo."
But while the city murmured, one person wasn't talking.
He was staring.
Flash Thompson stood a few feet away from the wreckage, clutching the strap of his backpack with white knuckles. His face was pale, his chest still rising and falling like someone who hadn't realized they were holding their breath.
Because a few minutes ago…
He almost died.
He'd just gotten off his part-time shift—grinding through hours bussing tables and fending off greasy customers at some late-night diner—when the street went nuts. He had ducked behind a parked car just in time to not get vaporized by a lightning bolt that turned said car into smoking scrap.
His legs had frozen. His body refused to move.
He was ready to accept the end.
But then—thwip.
A blur of black-and-white. A flash of sarcasm.
And boom—lightning stopped.
Flash had seen the whole fight. Not just the punches, not just the jokes, but the control. The way Spider-Man pulled his punches when he could've gone lethal. The way he reasoned with the police, stood up for mutants, and disappeared without waiting for applause.
Flash's mouth opened… and for once in his life, he had no insults to throw.
"…He saved me."
That whisper was barely audible. But it came from a place deeper than panic or relief.
It came from clarity.
Flash turned his head slowly, looking up at the building tops where Spider-Man had vanished. He didn't see a freak. Or a mutant. Or a masked weirdo in a skintight suit.
He saw a hero.
No—he saw his hero.
All his life, Flash had idolized strength. He liked champions, warriors, men who didn't back down from a fight. That's why he played sports, acted tough, picked on people like Peter Parker—people who reminded him of weakness.
But Spider-Man?
Spider-Man was strong in all the ways Flash never understood until now.
Control. Compassion. Courage.
It wasn't about punching the hardest.
It was about standing tall when no one else would.
Flash swallowed hard and pulled out his phone.
Not to call someone.
Not to tweet about it.
He opened his notes app and wrote:
"Spider-Man saved my life today. I saw who he really is.
Not a freak. Not a menace.
He's the hero I want to be."
And in that moment, Flash Thompson became something new.
A fan.
A believer.
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As he swung through the city, Peter's mind shifted gears.
'Where's Jess?'
Jessica was supposed to be training tonight.
Peter had put together a strict training regimen for her, and while he wasn't exactly her coach, he was keeping an eye on her progress.
'She better not have skipped it.'
Jessica was strong, no doubt about it. But she still had gaps in her combat skills that needed fixing.
Still, knowing Jess, she could be anywhere.
He needed to check in.
Swinging up to a high rooftop, Peter perched on the edge and pulled out his modified communicator.
It wasn't the most high-tech thing in the world, but it let him keep in touch with his fellow team mates.
He saw the message that she was at the Parker house.
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In a corporate skyscraper so shiny it probably had its own atmosphere, Norman Osborn stood before a wall of screens, each one showing a different feed—gang activity, lab reports, financial tickers, and yes, even live footage of Spider-Man casually flipping off a building like gravity owed him rent.
The light from the monitors cast Osborn's chiseled face in a pale glow, his eyes glinting with the kind of intelligence that made stockbrokers sweat and war generals second-guess their strategies.
"Fascinating," he muttered, voice smooth as polished glass.
He didn't say the name aloud.
He didn't need to.
Everyone in his inner circle knew who he was watching.
Spiderman.
Norman Osborn's story wasn't the type you'd find in bedtime books—unless those books were ghostwritten by trauma, betrayal, and chronic ambition.
Born to a father who blamed the world for everything—including his own failures—Norman had grown up with one goal: Never be weak.
That meant power, wealth, reputation.
So he clawed his way up—through science, through business, through backroom deals greased with money and blood.
Oscorp wasn't just a company. It was a kingdom. And Norman was its cold, calculating king.
He had once had a wife, Emily, but she had died too young, her final days spent watching her husband vanish into ambition. His son, Harry, barely knew him. Norman treated the boy like a stock investment: check the quarterly results, complain when they underperform, toss money at the problem.
But deep beneath the steel-and-glass façade of Oscorp, in a lab known only to a select few, Norman had discovered something else: power—true, terrifying power—sealed inside a green-tinted serum meant to enhance human potential.
It had exploded in his face.
Literally.
Thanks to Harry's well-meaning teenage tantrum, the serum had been sabotaged. But instead of killing him, it did something worse.
It made Norman feel powerful.
Sharper. Smarter. Free.
Also, completely and delightfully unhinged.
He told no one. But from that moment, something else lived in his head. A voice. A darker side.
Some called it a split personality.
Norman called it… the part that tells the truth.
Now, five years into his secret campaign to control New York's underworld, Norman Osborn had gathered more than just gangs.
He had powered enforcers—mutants, cybernetically enhanced mercs, even failed super-soldier prototypes. He had back-alley deals with corrupt senators and military men. He could cripple a hospital with one press release or launch a drug empire with the flick of a pen.
And yet…
There was still one problem.
Kingpin.
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If New York was a chessboard, then most of the pieces were already in play.
The Fantastic Four? They were off fighting space whales or babysitting pocket dimensions (seriously, Reed once got lost in his own sock dimension).
The Avengers? Busy coordinating interstellar treaties and arguing over whose turn it was to clean the Quinjet.
X-Men? Probably dealing with time travel, evil clones, or some mutant melodrama.
But street-level problems? Like organized crime, rogue supervillains, or bank-robbing psychos with electrical powers and fashion sense stolen from a neon rave?
Those were beneath the world's heavy hitters.
Which meant the streets were still crawling with danger.
And up until recently, the only real nightmares the underworld had to fear were:
Daredevil: The brooding, blind ninja lawyer who beat people up and then sued them in court.
Punisher: Basically Batman with zero impulse control and a love of explosives.
Elektra: An assassin so deadly she could probably kill you with a chopstick and a sassy wink.
Rogue villains: Wildcards. Chaos with capes.
But now?
Now there was Spider-Man.
And unlike most new heroes who showed up and got kicked through a wall within a week, this kid was… different.
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Somewhere in the glass-and-chrome towers of Oscorp, Norman Osborn watched everything unfold.
The fight with Supercharger had been captured by six satellites, three drones, and a hacked vending machine across the street (don't ask). Spider-Man's moves were precise. His strength? Alarming. His reaction time? Unnatural.
Norman leaned back in his throne of an office chair, watching the footage on repeat like it was the world's most violent music video.
"Interesting," he murmured, sipping what was probably a six-thousand-dollar glass of scotch.
Then he did what all villains do when they get a really bad idea.
He smiled.
"Bring him to me," Norman ordered, voice as calm as a weather forecast.
He wasn't talking about Spider-Man—not yet. He was talking about Supercharger.
Once a scientist. Now a crispy, angry lightning battery in a broken body.
Supercharger had been crushed. Humiliated. Left twitching in a crater with only shame and static to keep him company.
But to Norman?
That wasn't a failure.
That was raw material.
"You see," Norman whispered to himself, "every broken man can be repurposed. You just need the right tools."
Norman loved tools.
Especially when they screamed.
Let's take a second to talk about Norman Osborn.
To the public, he was the face of Oscorp: a philanthropist, a tech genius, a walking press conference.
To those who knew better? He was New York's secret emperor.
And ever since he inhaled that little cocktail of experimental goblin goo (seriously, someone should have stopped him), Norman had been… well, not right.
The Goblin Formula gave him strength, speed, and enough insanity to make a therapist cry into their degree. But Norman wasn't content with being superhuman.
No, he wanted to be invincible.
Which is why he trained in martial arts like a maniac, sparred with machines that could punch through tanks, and collected weapons the way normal people collect Pokémon cards.
Oscorp wasn't just a tech company.
It was a weapons lab dressed in a lab coat.
Norman had stolen Stark tech. Reverse-engineered SHIELD prototypes. He even had a fridge in his lab labeled "DO NOT TOUCH – CONTAINS SENTIENT PLASMA."
But he'd never used any of it publicly.
Why?
Because the moment he unleashed his true arsenal, Tony Stark would come knocking.
And Norman wasn't quite ready for a billionaire brawl with Iron Man.
Yet.
Of course, Spider-Man was ruining everything.
One costumed do-gooder with a sense of humor and abs that shouldn't be legal was threatening the entire ecosystem of crime Norman had spent years building.
Worse?
People liked him.
The media couldn't pin anything on him. The gangs were scared of him. Even the cops—despite some grumbling—were reluctantly admitting he was saving their lives.
So, Norman did what he always did.
He started planning.
At Empire State University, Professor Curt Connors was playing with DNA like it was clay. His regenerative serum could regrow limbs, rebuild organs, maybe even reverse death if you gave it enough time and really believed in miracles.
Norman had eyes on all of it.
Not because he cared about healing people—please, what do you take him for?
But because regeneration plus Goblin Formula?
That was next-level monster stuff.
Imagine a Goblin that couldn't be killed. That grew stronger with every wound. That could adapt, mutate, evolve.
Yeah.
Norman imagined it every day.
And the thought made him giggle.
As he stood by the massive window overlooking his kingdom, Norman let the city lights dance across his reflection.
"This is my city," he whispered.
The words weren't loud. They weren't angry.
They were true.
And if some wise-cracking wallcrawler thought he could swing in and start changing the rules?
Then it was time to remind everyone—
Goblins don't play fair.
They rewrite the game.
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This… new player. This anomaly.
He hadn't touched Osborn's operations directly. Not yet. But Norman had been in the game long enough to recognize a pattern when he saw one.
✔ First, they punch out purse-snatchers.
✔ Then they start webbing up gangsters.
✔ Next thing you know, your illegal vibranium shipment disappears and your henchmen are calling in sick because of "trauma-induced arachnophobia."
"I already ran one of these fools out of town," Norman growled. "Why do they keep crawling back?"
Ah yes. The Hydra effect of heroism. Cut one Spider, two more show up with better gadgets and worse puns.
And worst of all?
The people liked him.
Norman leaned back in his chair, hands steepled like a man considering ten different ways to destroy you without breaking eye contact.
That's when a single, terrifying name passed through his mind like a whispered prophecy:
Galactus.
Now that was power. A cosmic devourer of worlds. No speeches. No masks. Just chomp—entire civilizations gone.
Norman liked that kind of efficiency.
Compared to that?
Spider-Man was a gnat.
But gnats could still bite.
And Norman Osborn?
He wasn't about to let anyone scratch his empire.
A flicker of inspiration lit up behind his eyes.
'What if I didn't fight the Spider…?'
He glanced to the far end of his office, where a digital map showed all active crime families in New York, including one that glowed an angry red:
Wilson Fisk.
The Kingpin.
A man built like a refrigerator with a God complex. Their war had been cold, calculated—moves and countermoves played out in silence. Neither willing to tip the scales too far.
But if Spider-Man could be pointed… redirected, even—
"Kill two birds with one radioactive spider," Norman mused, grinning.
Of course, it could backfire spectacularly.
Wildcards had a nasty habit of blowing up in your face… sometimes literally.
Still.
That was the game.
And Norman?
Norman was the kind of player who smiled while flipping the board.
He tapped a button on his desk.
"Track him."
A voice answered through the speaker. "Sir?"
"I want eyes everywhere. Every camera, every drone, every low-level punk who thinks tagging a wall with a spider logo is 'vibes.' I want movement logs, fight breakdowns, scent markers—everything."
The voice hesitated. "That… might take a while."
Norman's eyes narrowed.
"Then you'd better start yesterday."
Because here's the truth:
Heroes always had a weakness.
A best friend.
A sweetheart.
A dying aunt with suspiciously good advice.
It was only a matter of time before Norman found it.
And when he did?
He'd put a leash around the Spider's neck.
And turn him into a weapon.
His weapon.