"I'm fine, Aunt May," Peter said. He had returned to the Daily Planet after his encounter with what appeared to be Iron Man. Shortly thereafter, he called his aunt from Lois's desk to make sure she was all right, and to let her know he was fine. "I'll probably be out all night, since Mr. White and Mr. Jameson want the best coverage in the paper tomorrow."
"Be careful," May replied. "Don't get yourself into any trouble just for a picture."
"Will do," Peter said. "Bye." He hung up the phone and turned to Lois. "She's fine."
"That's good," Lois said. "How about you? Did anything happen while you were out?"
"Well, Iron Man attacked Spider-Man, but Jimmy was following that, so I went to get some pictures elsewhere."
"I thought Iron Man was a good guy," Lois replied.
"Oh, he is. You see, Spidey later found out from the Avengers League that the 'Iron Man' that attacked him was a robot controlled by the Manhunters."
"This has been one strange night . . . "
Just then, the building rocked.
"What was that?!" someone shouted.
Peter felt his spider-sense go off. "Something's wrong," he said.
"How do you know?" Lois asked.
"I just have this feeling. We're about to be in some serious -- "
Peter was interrupted by the sound of crashing glass. People looked around. The newly replaced windows in the City Room were fine.
"Jameson," Lois muttered. "This is probably one of those tricks to convince him to sell. What do you think Peter?" She turned around, and Peter was gone. "Peter?"
A few stories above, J. Jonah Jameson was hiding under his desk. He was afraid for once in his life. He was afraid of the green skinned creature who had crashed into his office.
"Come out, Jameson," the creature said, in a deep voice. "I know you're in here. Hiding under your desk is not going to help."
"Wh-who are y-you?" Jameson asked.
The green skinned creature smiled. "I am the Green Goblin."
Jameson stood up behind his desk. For the first time, he saw the truly grotesque creature standing in front of him. His skin was a dark green, somewhat subdued. He wore purple pants and a purple cape. His shirt left the middle of his chest bare. The belt around the Goblin's waist was green, with a medalion or something similiar as the buckle. He was standing on a glider.
The Goblin glided closer to Jameson. "Right now, I'm working for Norman Osborn. He wants you to sell the Daily Planet. You're making it very difficult for him to obtain this newspaper, and so, I am supposed to convince you to sell, anyway I can."
Just then, Spider-Man swung in through the broken window and knocked the Goblin in the back. "Hello. I'm Spider-Man, and I'll probably be kicking your butt for the next few minutes. Might I have the privilege of knowing who's butt I am kicking?"
The Green Goblin turned around and fired a blast of orange energy at Spider-Man. Spidey couldn't tell if it came from his hand, or where.
"I am the Green Goblin," replied Spidey's adversary. "Remember that, for it will be the name of the one who will finally destroy you."
"I take it you've heard of me?" Spidey asked.
The Green Goblin sped on his glider, and knocked Spider-Man out of the office. "I guess you could say that," he said with an evil chuckle. Looking down, he saw Spider-Man holding on to the side of the building. That was the last thing he saw before he found webbing in his eyes.
"That's it!" the Goblin shouted, ripping the webbing off. "I was just going to let you go for now, Spider-Man. But now, you've made me mad!"
Spider-Man knew that the fight had started, so he jumped off of the side of the Daily Planet and began webslinging away, hoping to draw the Green Goblin with him. He was right. The Goblin followed.
Cody Driscol looked around. He was back home. Looking at his watch, he had only been gone an hour or so. That's cool. I ran to the state line, and I'm not even tired.
He ran inside. He reached his porch in less than a second.
Cody was unaware of the shadowed figure watching him from across the street.
"No way, where is he?" Spidey mumbled as the he stuck the building wall, high above Manhattan. Green Goblin was gone, vanished behind the web-headed hero, the minute he turned his back. A strange sensation tickled him from behind, like he was being taken for a big fool.
Suddenly, fireworks exploded from behind his back, sending him falling down stories to the ground. Spider-Man spun a webline which attached to a nearby pole, and swung back up to face the Goblin, spinning a ball of hard web.
"What can I say? Let's see . . . how about, take this?!?!" The costumed hero smashed Green Goblin in the face with the web, sending the villain falling down to the rooftops. Landing on his back, he rolled over, as the pain became to obvious to bear. Spidey somersaulted down, and landed on his two feet. He was getting too tense, the battle with the Iron Man prototype had worn him down. And the city was still in blackout, thanks to those Manhunters. Already, looting and crime were already rampant, fires already burning, no one to turn to . . . not good a one night for a hero, especially a relatively new one.
"No one messes with the Spider-Man! Still the champ-i-o-n! . . . uh . . . hey, what's up with you?"
The Green Goblin began to grab himself, as if something began to tear him apart inside. Spidey moved closer, as the villain seemed to be in pain. He tried to reach out for the Goblin, face lowered, and tortured face hidden from view. Suddenly, Spidey found himself face to face with the mask of terror.
The mask of the Green Goblin.
"Ha...haha...hahah...HAhahaAHAhaha!!!" He grabbed the Spider-Man by his costume, and smashed him on the floor. "I didn't think you'd be dumb enough to do something like that," the Green Goblin mocked, lifting the stunned Spidey dangling in his arms. "After facing all those useless twits you call villains . . . this is all you can give me? Answer me! Give me all the reasons why I shouldn't leave you crippled . . . because the Goblin can."
He sent Spidey crashing into the water tower, and then summoned his glider to him.
"Best advise you, my dear arachnid friend," the Green Goblin said, as his Goblin-glider began to lift him high above the skies. "You take my warning seriously--otherwise . . . " He threw a pumpkin bomb towards Spider-Man and missed. Well, not really. Gunpowder began to explode across the rooftops, sprinkled by Green Goblin when he fell in pain.
" . . . otherwise may not be so much better than you think."
Spidey, dazed, watched as the Goblin began to fly off. "NOT so fast," he muttered, going after the costumed villain. He fired a webline onto the Goblin's glider, dragging his wing down.
"Hah! Didn't listen, didn't you?!?! Well, no matter," The Goblin shouted as he flew directly towards a building, then swerved up, hoping to smash Spidey on the wall. At the spur of the moment, Spidey lifted his feet and began climbing (or walking sideways against the wall) quickly upwards to the sky. At the top of the building, with no ground to stay on, Spider-Man leapt and somersaulted, landing behind the Green Goblin, riding on the glider.
"Hey, ugly," he whispered, punching Green Goblin as he turned. "I don't think I'll be needing your warning!"
The two began to trade punches, as the glider began flying upwards to the atmosphere. Spider-Man began to estimate how far they were from the ground, as the Goblin swerved the flying contraption back down. The air pressure began to get to Spider-Man, as they both began to plummet to the ground. Suddenly, the Goblin laughed wickedly, as if he had moved the webcrawler in a position he couldn't get out.
"Let's just say, in every battle, one must take a precaution." The part of the glider where the Green Goblin was separated from Spidey, as he began to fall down to the pavement. Spider-Man's ears began to ring, either the laughter of the Green Goblin, or the sound of the engine letting out a long wail of mechanical agony.
As seconds ticked away, Spidey's senses began to flare up in panic.
"Ohhhh ggggrreeaaatttt!!!!" After connecting a circuit, the separate Goblin-glider began sped up even faster. Falling, a strange sensation ticked from behind his mind, motioning him to connect one last circuit . . .
The glider suddenly stopped in mid-air, propelling Spidey to stick to the walls of the building. "Oh . . . I think I'm going to puke . . . " From above, he watched the Goblin look down on him. Grabbing reign of the mobile glider, Spidey controlled it to come up after the Green Goblin.
"What a fool you are . . . did you think I didn't rig myself in case one of my foes decide to use my inventions against me??"
The glider exploded in mid-air, as Spidey flipped sideways, few feet away from the Goblin's flying contraption.
Spidey then grabbed a cartridge of the web formula, and threw it at the glider, plugging its engine as the heat melted the plastic intolerably. "Finally, some potential challenge," Green Goblin cackled, as his Goblin Glider began to descend downwards. Spider-Man swung upwards to meet the opposition, grabbing his enemy.
"Now, who's the Spider-Man?" He asked mockingly, as he began to spin a webbed parachute.
Suddenly, the Green Goblin brought him face to face once more with Spidey. "Tell me, my powers were that enhanced of mine own self . . . I am twice the man I was. And only one man is needed to crush a spider."
Pushing Spidey upwards, he turned the clogged engine aiming at the hero, and turned the engine thrust to full power. As the explosion seared Spidey's chest, burning his emblem, the webslinger kicked himself from the glider, leaping over a spot where the Goblin wouldn't stand a chance of being able to hit him.
Spider-Man came crashing down on the Green Goblin, and they both fell to the ground far below them. During their descent, they separated, and Spidey lost track of the Goblin as he himself hit the ground hard.
As he pried his head out of the pavement, he looked around. Oh, man, he thought. I know this place. It's Vic's neighborhood!
Standing up, Spider-Man heard a familiar voice behind him.
"Problems, Spidey?"
The heat vision in Spidey's mask allowed him to see the outline of The Shadow. "Sorry if I bothered you, man."
"No problem. I was already coming out. So, what's up now?"
Spidey sighed. "Earlier tonight, I had to deal with an Iron Man robot that had been co-opted by a group of mechanical aliens called the Manhunters. Now, some guy called the Green Goblin attacked the Planet."
"Part of the takeover?"
Spidey nodded, slowly stopping. He was usually still and quiet. "Hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Sounds like a rumbling."
"Possibly another of these 'Manhunters'?"
Just then, a mechanical humanoid landed just behind The Shadow.
"DESIGNATE: SHADOW. I am Sentinel Prime, designed to single out mutants, and exterminate them."
" . . . right, like I'll let you do that," Spidey said, groaning behind his mask. "Look, I've a really bad hair day . . . do you mind if we just walked out?"
"NEGATIVE: imperative assault required. Super-human power leveled entity detected with mutant . . . eradication if necessary." The Sentinel Prime's eyes began to glow fiery red, as Spidey and the Shadow dodged the blast. "I'd say your day's about to get worse," the Shadow said.
{Sorry about this.}
"TARGET: ability being used. Neutralization required. Gathering data on DESIGNATE: SHADOW. Data downloading . . . " The prototype's eyelids began to coat itself with heat vision.
"TARGET: cease resistance. PROTOTYPE is programmed to work for the safety of humankind . . . mutant activity and offenses must be 'DELETED'."
"Hey what are superhero friends here for, if there aren't any superhero . . . er . . . villains," Spidey yelled, as the Sentinel Prime began firing laser beams all over the place.
{Hey, Vic! Don't concentrate on hiding yourself, I think he already knows--}
{I know.}
Spidey and the Shadow held back, and ran into the darkness of the alleyway. The Sentinel placed another coat of infrared over the heat vision, and began calculating Spidey's moves.
"Super-human powered entity, calibration locked." Spidey crawled by the walls quickly, as the Sentinel Prime weapon continued its assault. Grabbing a garbage can, the wall crawler leapt behind the robotic menace.
"Hey--say nighty-night!" He smashed the garbage at the Sentinel's face, just hoping that . . .
The Sentinel Prime prototype stood before Spidey, staring unemotionally into the hero's face.
"Uh . . . hi?"
Suddenly, laughter began to echo through the alleyway, distracting the robot from even doing what it planned to do. Spidey stepped back, and searched for something that could just be able to shut down the Sentinel Prime. "DESIGNATE VOICE SIGNATURE: SHADOW. Locking . . . "
It then grabbed something invisible to the wall beside it, and threw it across the pavement. The Shadow cringed, as he felt himself overpowered by the Sentinel, his legs growing numb.
"DESIGNATE: SHADOW. Elimination sequence begin . . . "
"Get it over with then . . . "
"5"
" . . . somehow, you won't."
"1"
{Spidey, I need...!!!}
The Shadow closed his eyes, then heard a loud metallic sound smashed against cold steel. He opened them, and found Spidey sighing, as a steel crowbar was jammed into the Sentinel Prime's back. He examined the circuitry on the board, as the Shadow relaxed a bit on the ground.
"Hey, cool . . . I bet I know what to do with this," Spidey exclaimed, taking the crowbar off, and tinkering with the circuitry.
" . . . how do you know how to do that?" Vic asked, as the wallcrawler adjusted the plugs.
"I was, or still am, a nerd, Vic. Don't dis me."
"Er . . . It never occurred to me until now, since we've been fighting for our lives . . . but why's there a sear on your chest? Oven explode on you?"
"In the Goblin fight. Something like that."
Once completing his adjustments on the Sentinel Prime, it began to shake back to life. Turning around, it spotted Spidey and the Shadow in its plain view.
" . . . NON-MUTANT ACTIVITY in this vicinity. VERIFYING SOURCE . . . SOURCE has established contact with mutant DESIGNATES: UNVERIFIED.
The Sentinel flew off, and The Shadow stood up, dusting himself off. He turned to Spider-Man.
"I hate to run off right now, but I have to stop that thing."
Spidey nodded. "Go," he said.
The Shadow ran off after the Sentinel, thinking, He can take me to those 'X-Men' I heard about on the news . . .
Next Issue: Generation Next!