Chapter 1-5
Undisclosed Location
A light flickered above them, going off every few seconds or so. Aaron Davis and Mac Gargan stood under this light, looking at it and counting how long it took for the light to go out with their fingers. Aaron counted seven seconds on his fingers while for the next interval, Gargan counted eight seconds.
This place in the subway was the place Kingsley told Aaron and Gargan to meet him should they decide to work with him. Though they were willing to take him up on the offer, they were still wary, evident by the fact the two of them were looking at both ends of the subway, keeping an eye out for any possible dangers that came their way.
The two criminals shivered in their jackets before they both pounded on the steel door in front of them, their knocks out of tune.
"Maybe this was a waste of time," Aaron said. "Let's go."
"I can't go back," Gargan said. "I'm too deep in the shit to go back. Kingsley is either going to fulfill his end of the deal or I'm going to sell him as ransom to the Scorpions."
Aaron opened his mouth to say something before the steel door was pulled open with a loud clank.
Roderick Kingsley stood there in his blue and yellow varsity jacket and smiled at the two thieves like there was not a worry in the world.
"I see you guys have made it," he said gleefully. "Come in, make yourselves at home, friends."
Aaron and Gargan looked at each other and nodded, a silent agreement going between them before they stepped into Kingsley's pitch-black place.
"I'm sorry, where are my manners. Let me turn on the lights for you." He reaches over and blindly flips on a switch.
The room lit up with a bulb in the center to illuminate the contents of the room. Aaron and Gargan were taken aback by what they found.
A green suit with what looked to be a scorpion tail on the left corner of the room, complemented by a table full of vials of liquids of various colors, a purple suit in the other corner with boots and gloves with glowing knuckles in the other corner.
What took them back most of all was the suit in the middle.
"Is that the Green Goblin's suit?"
Roderick skipped over to the villainous armor like a little girl. "You mean this? I mean, it is the Green Goblin's suit but modified a little."
The 'Green Goblin' armor lost all of its original green colors and was replaced with a yellow color. The armor was spray-painted yellow, the mask painted yellow with red circles around where the eyes should be, a hood now added to the mask, and the bottoms of the suit were colored blue. The one thing that seemed to remain from the original Goblin was the glider beside the suit but even the glider appeared somewhat different.
The glider was roughly the same size as the Green Goblin's original glider but the one difference was the design of the Green Goblin's mask at the front.
"You a copycat killer?" Aaron asked.
"Why would you think that?" Roderick laughed as he moved over to the table and grabbed a belt of pumpkin bombs.
"Is this what you want us to do? Become New York's next big supervillains? We'll be like walking targets for Spider-Man."
Roderick held up a knife. "No. I already have a plan. I've spent over a year planning these bank heists and I've thought of every contingency. While we may be walking targets, we won't be vulnerable."
"What do you mean?"
Roderick turned to them and set himself against the table, grinning manically.
"I know Spider-Man's strengths, and weaknesses. Even better than that, all I had to do was find a couple of people who are anti-Spider-Man and give them a little gift. Hear out my plan for the first operation; we'll not be robbing back my money."
"Why not?"
"Because of Spider-Man," Gargan said.
"Exactly." Roderick looked at Gargan with a smile. "Put on these suits, become supervillains, you'll have everything you want. Follow my instructions to the letter on our first operation. If we succeed, then Spider-Man will be a threat to us no more."
Aaron and Gargan looked at each other, obviously considering Kinglsey's plan before they both silently nodded. They turned back to him and nodded.
"Perfect," Roderick smiled.
David's Apartment
About an hour after school was over, David went home after bidding farewell to Felicia and locked himself in his room. He opened up his computer and pulled up a few sources.
Time to get back to what I was doing in the first place.
He pulls up articles on cat burglars.
Since Black Cat isn't exactly a well-known burglar in this universe, I can't just type in Black Cat and expect a million results or so.
He searched through the internet and found a website talking about a cat burglar that robbed an art museum.
'Cat Burglar robs art museum', seems pretty generic. No pictures or media-given names on the burglar. Absolutely nothing.
He looked up to see if the police had been investigating any cat burglars.
Not even the police are searching for any cat-themed cat burglars. It's almost like Felicia doesn't exist in the cat-burglarizing world.
That's when David remembered something.
Wait a second, I vaguely remember two years ago asking Felicia what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said she wants to follow in her father's footsteps and join the police force. Another thing she said was that he was trailing a world-renowned thief known as the Cat.
He searches up world-renowned thieves known as 'The Cat'.
He found thirty articles as a result. He clicked on the first article, which was dated 2005, seventeen years ago, and his eyes lit up from what he found.
'The Cat steals one billion dollar diamond'. 'The Cat steals Mona Lisa painting'. 'The Cat steals from Fort Knox'. 'The Cat disappears after stealing from the Winstar World Casino'? Man, this cat burglar seems much more proficient and prolific than Felicia. Felicia has barely stolen five million dollars worth of loot in her entire two-year run as Black Cat.
He stroked his chin and thought back to last night when he had dinner with his girlfriend's family.
Let's recap so I'm on the same page as myself. My girlfriend is a cat burglar who has bad-luck powers, she told me she wants to be like her father when she grows up, who trailed the world-renowned cat burglar known as the Cat. I spill a drink at my girlfriend's house, Daddy Hardy is looking at Felicia instead of me, he pulls me over to the side of the road, demanding answers from me, I find out that the police aren't trailing Felicia Hardy in any way, shape or form, and on top of that, Black Cat isn't even remotely as infamous as I am or the Cat before her. In a realistic world, someone like Black Cat would be noticed sooner or later but the fact she does not just prove that someone is covering up her tracks.
He sighs and leans back in his chair.
If I didn't know any better, I would say that Felicia's police captain father, Walter Hardy, is the prolific Cat that stole from all these places. It's the only thing that makes sense: The Cat vanishes off the face of the earth when Felicia is born in 2005, she gets her bad-luck powers somehow, he becomes aware of them, she follows in his footsteps, and using his police connections, makes sure that Black Cat isn't known to the public, therefore, making sure the world does know that the Cat has a copycat.
He chuckles.
I can't believe it. My girlfriend's father is a super and he is suspicious of me. If he's aware that his daughter is Black Cat, is he aware of Spider-Man and Black Cat being together? If that's the case, it makes me wonder what he thinks of me and what he suspects me of. Another thing I'm curious about: did Felicia get her powers from him, or did she acquire them later in life? I'll ask Felicia tonight after she's done stealing.
A notification on his phone went off. He picks it up and answers. An emergency police transmission.
"All units, the Raimi National Bank of Queens is being robbed by a lone masked individual. Officers proceed to the aforementioned location. Be advised, the individual robbing the bank should be considered extremely dangerous and unpredictable."
Bank robbery, extremely dangerous individual? Sounds like it's Spider-time.
David suits up and he leaps out of his bedroom window. He dives down to the bottom of his apartment before shooting a web and swinging out. It took roughly ten minutes to get to the Queens area and he waited on top of a tall building before scoping the place out.
It had been less than fifteen minutes since the police transmission and already was the front of the bank filled with cops and SWAT armed to the teeth, loaded and ready for bear.
The police broadcast said there's only ONE individual inside and that he's extremely dangerous. Maybe a suicide bomber. Wait till he gets a load of me, then we'll see whose the real dangerous one.
Spidey leaped onto the roof of the bank and web-zipped over to an air duct and climbed inside.
Standard Spider Procedure: Crawl into the air vents, take the robbers out by surprise, and kill a few. Since there's only one of them, this should be done in five minutes.
Spidey pulled up to a grate below him and looked through. He scoped the place out.
From what he could gather, all the hostages in the banks were stacked up against the wall, their backs turned, and they were all holding something in their hands.
Looks like the robber is keeping the hostages at bay with grenades. If he's only one man, how does he expect to get away?
A few seconds later, a man carrying two duffle bags came walking out of the vault.
Well, well, well, what do we have here? Early Christmas gift, Mr. Bank Robber?
He pushes open the gate. To prevent the grate from falling, he catches it with his sticky fingertips and moves it aside.
We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas…
He webs the bank robber's duffle bags.
…and a Happy New Year.
He web-yanks the duffel bags up to the vent with him and when the duffel bag was halfway up, his spider-sense went off.
What the fuck?
The duffel bags blew up mid-air and near Spidey's face, almost setting him on fire. The web-headed vigilante crawls back into the ventilation system, smacking himself in the face to douse out the sparks that caught his mask.
In a burst of adrenaline, he dives headfirst through the vent and towards the robber. His spider-sense went off again.
What the fuck? A glider?
A glider collides into Spidey mid-air and he gets punctured in the side with the glider's blade.
The glider flies around the room with Spidey still impaled a few more times before Spidey manages to detach himself from the blade.
As if everything was happening in slow-motion, Spidey saw that he was wounded on his left side a few inches under his ribcage. He reaches his hand out and grabs the three splotches of blood that managed to escape his wound, catching the drops in his gloved hand.
I can't let so much s a single drop of blood escape from my body. If the police find so much as a single DROP of my blood, then it'll all be over for me, sooner or later.
Before the glider was out of reach, he reached for the blood-soaked blade that impaled him and ripped it from the glider before falling on his feet near one of the stands. Without wasting another second, he webs up his wound to prevent more blood from spilling.
Ahh webs, aside from webbing up people's mouths and noses to prevent them from breathing, also work well as makeshift bandages.
The glider returned to the owner and the bank robber jumped onto it.
"Wow, it is such an honor to get to meet you, Spider-Man."
Spidey looks up at the man on the glider, his eyes widening in surprise behind his mask.
Green Goblin? No, he's yellow. Yellow Goblin?
The goblin figure laughed. "Hey, I knew you look like that. The name's Hobgoblin, the successor of the Green Goblin."
Spidey clutched the blade in his hand, almost drawing blood before he withdrew.
"Thank you for making my job easier, Spider-Man." He smiled behind the mask and touched a button on his glove.
The grenades in the hostages' hands Spidey identified as pumpkin bombs lit up. Spidey lunged and webbed as many grenades out of the hostages' hands as he could and web-yanked him towards him.
Out of the thirty hostages recessed against the wall, he managed to yank the grenades out of range for twenty-six hostages. Spidey managed to web-yank the last four pumpkin bombs away from the last four hostages but they were still in range as the bombs detonated.
The bombs went off, blowing up in the center of the bank and making debris fly across the room. The four hostages still in range of the bombs received the heaviest of injuries as they were slammed against the wall.
"Thanks for the opening, Spider-Man," Hobgoblin laughed as he flew through the front doors, crashing the doors to smithereens as he flew up in the air.
Spidey chased after him.
The second he went out the door, his spider-sense went off.
Not again.
Spidey managed to dodge in time as a flying purple figure nearly collided with him. Spidey swings away to give himself some elbow room but he kept his eyes on the new purple figure flying through the air, leaping from building to building in single leaps.
Who the hell is this guy?
Aside from wearing purple, this figure had gloves and boots with spikes on them and a cape flying in the wind. The figure was outfitted with a mask with yellow eyes and black around them.
Hobgoblin's got an accomplice? This is certainly an unprecedented case.
The purple figure landed on top of the rooftop before looking over at Spidey with what he assumed was a scowl under his mask.
Spidey decides to swing after the purple figure first. He web-swings after the figure as he soars through the air, jumping from building to building with those glowing boots of his. Before he'd forget, he webbed the blade with his blood to the edge of a building so he could come back for it later.
Spidey chases after the purple figure as he leaps from building to building. He shot a web at him, who dodged the incoming attack and made a sharp turn to the left.
This guy doesn't have any superpowers, but he does have technology of some kind and that technology is making him bounce from building to building. If I web-shoot those jumpers in his boots, he won't be able to go anywhere.
He holds his arm out and shoots a web out.
Green acid spat from above rained down on the web and dissolved it instantly.
Spidey looks up a tall building to see a green figure wearing a mask that covered all but his mouth and what looked like a scorpion tail attached to his costume.
Remembering that he was still falling, he shoots a web out to swing on but that web received another spit of acid from above and he went falling. As Spidey shot another web out, he was struck from behind by Hobgoblin's glider and went slamming straight into the brick wall beside him.
He crashed through the wall and landed in an empty motel room, skidding across the wooden floor before coming to a stop at the wall. Spidey picks himself up and sets his back to the wall as he looked through the hole he just created. Sure enough, there was the Hobgoblin hovering in an almost mocking manner before the hole with the purple guy and green guy in the background.
Three supervillains, huh? Now that's interesting.
"I'll admit you guys made a good first impression," Spidey shouted.
"We always aim for the best," Hobgoblin replied. He pressed a button on his gloves once more and a rocket fired from his glider and aimed for the webhead.
Spidey frontflips over the rocket, dodging it, only for it to hit the wall and create a small explosion that sends Spidey flying forward and landing on his back.
Spidey rolls forward and shot a web at Hobgoblin. The web caught Hobgoblin in the chest, only for him to use the blade on his glider to slice the web and take off.
He must be the leader. I take him out and the other two are without their strategist.
Spidey raced after Hobgoblin, keeping his senses on high alert for the other two accomplices. They vanished from sight but Spidey was smart enough to know not to let his guard down.
Hobgoblin picked up speed on his glider but Spidey managed to keep paste. The yellow and blue villain quickly reached into his pouch and produced three pumpkin bombs and blindly threw them over his head.
Spidey quickly webbed the three grenades, and spun them around a unicycle, before throwing them at the villain.
You never should've left your back exposed.
The purple figure materializes from his right and flies in the direction of the pumpkin bombs. He held out both hands and clicked his thumbs against his index fingers, sending a shockwave from his gloves to the pumpkin bombs and sending them flying back right at Spidey.
Spidey webs the wall of the building beside him and quickly yanks a human-sized piece out and uses it as a shield for the pumpkin bombs. The brick wall shield was torn apart from the explosion but Spidey remained in hot pursuit.
The purple figure took off while Spidey continued to pursue Hobgoblin.
The yellow and blue villain went flying straight towards a tall building, gaining speed as he got closer and closer. When he was about to collide, he gripped the front of his glider and made the flying hoverboard fly straight up vertically, the glider inches away from touching the building.
Spidey thrust himself off a web and held his hands out to cling to the building. When his fingers made contact, he began climbing after the ascending Hobgoblin, only for the opposite result to happen.
He slipped off the building and began falling straight down to the bottom. Spidey jerked his hands up to grab the wall but he continued to slip down.
The Hobgoblin reached the top and flew over the roof, disappearing from sight.
Having no other choice, he shoots his web out to the roof of the building, which stopped his fall just a few stories above the ground. He glued his feet to the wall and looked at his gloved fingertips.
My power just stopped working. No, not my POWER, but my wall-scaling ability.
He tests his power out once more.
I can't cling to the wall. The fact that I'm able to support my own weight with one hand proves that I haven't lost all my powers or at the very least, my superstrength hasn't gone away yet. What the hell is going on?
His spider-sense went off.
And I still have my sixth sense so I haven't lost all my powers completely. Maybe-
He looked up to see the scorpion figure standing on the roof and firing acid from his tail at him. Spidey moves out of the way and was about to climb up the web but the web was dissolved by more of the scorpion's acid and SPidey went falling again.
Spidey was slightly caught off guard but he managed to shoot a web out and swing to the safety of another rooftop. He landed in the center of a rooftop and began looking around, surveilling his surroundings. He put a hand behind his ear and listened.
It's so quiet. No sound of a glider, no sound of acid being mixed in a scorpion tail, no sonic booms from purple gloves, nothing.
He web-swung his way up to the roof where Hobgoblin and the green guy were last seen and scanned the area.
They're gone. What the hell? They just vanished.
Spidey checked all sides of the roof and found nothing, no sign of the three villains.
What the hell is going on here? Who were these guys and why does the Hobgoblin have the Green Goblin's armor and glider and pumpkin bombs? And more importantly, why did my wall-scaling ability fail me?
He narrowed his eyes as he remembered something.
The blade with my blood on it. I better go retrieve it before the webbing dissolves and the police have my blood.
He web-swings back to where he left the webbed blade. He was mindful of the fact he couldn't ling to walls for the time being so he web-yanked the blade back to his hand. He gazed over the weapon and almost wiped the blood off of it before he thought of something.
I get stabbed by this blade and suddenly, I'm losing my wall-crawling ability? I've been stabbed before and no injuries or wounds have ever caused one of my powers to malfunction. The exception would probably be my danger radar, which is faulty when I suffer from severe head trauma. Therefore, it must've been something on the knife that stabbed me. I got to get home and analyze the contents on this knife.
He leaps off the building and swings home.
David' Apartment
About thirty minutes later, David swung home and he crawled through his bedroom window. When he pulled off his mask, his mother entered the room and gasped upon seeing the impromptu web-bandage on his side.
"Are you okay?" she asked with worry.
"I'm fine, Mom."
"Then why are you bleeding?"
David looked at his web-bandage. Surely, it was soaked with blood but no blood was seeping through, just as he hoped.
"This, this is just bodypaint Felicia put on me,'' he chuckled.
Without saying anything else, Misa took David's hand and lead him to the living room. She closed all the blinds and took out a first aid kit. Not needing to be told, David shrugged off the top of his costume and ripped the web from his wound.
Such a loving and caring woman, uselessly taking care of her son when he can easily heal up.
Misa began working on his wounds, soaking up the blood and stitching it up.
"This will heal up in a few hours or so, Mom," David told.
"But what about infection?" she asked. "Are you immune to infections?"
Now that I think about it, I can still get sick from infections. I'm not exactly like Wolverine from the X-Men comics.
David shook his head. "I can heal from wounds but I have no power to defend myself from diseases."
"You may heal, but I'm preventing you from getting infections."
"Thank you, Mom, I'm grateful."
"I've been meaning to ask, what's with the knife in your hands."
David finally looked down at the blade in his hands. He remembered prying this off of the Hobgoblin's glider and his powers began faltering.
"I got stabbed by this supervillain flying around on a glider."
Misa finishes stitching up his wound before pointing to the muted television. "You mean that villain?" She grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
"-luckily, the hostages weren't killed in the heist. Unfortunately, at least four hostages suffered severe injuries from a series of explosions. The culprit behind this bank robbery was a supervillain flying around on a glider. Folks wonder if this is the Green Goblin who has returned from the grave but according to witnesses inside the bank, this supervillain goes by the moniker, Hobgoblin."
"The Hobgoblin," Misa repeated. She looked at her son. "You think it could be Barton Hamilton?"
Been a while since I told Mom the truth about Barton Hamilton. I'm not surprised she still remembers; people remember betrayals from people you love than from random strangers.
David shook his head. "Barton Hamilton was killed by his own glider and I'm pretty sure resurrecting dead people isn't a thing in this universe."
"But who is he? Why is the naming himself after the Green Goblin? How did he get his glider?"
David shrugged. "I'm wondering that myself. Whoever this person is, they have access to the Green Goblin's glider, pumpkin bombs, and other various equipment."
"And what about those other two guys with him?" She pointed to the screen.
The purple figure and green-tailed guy were caught in a blurry image on the screen. Headlines from the Daily Bugle had already given the name.
"The Prowler and The Scorpion," David read. "Catchy titles."
"Who are they?"
"They're his accomplices. The Prowler has some kind of boots and gloves that make him fast and shoot shockwaves while the Scorpion guy can shoot acid from his tail."
Where do all these guys get their supervillain status from? Green Goblin, Octavius, now this Hobgoblin, Scorpion, and Prowler, what kind of world are we living in when something like this becomes a norm?
"Three supervillains working together," she stated.
"If there's one thing I learned when a group of villains works together, it's that it often makes no sense because they usually have different goals and ideologies that there's no reason for them to work together."
Criminals working together are few and far between, especially when they trust each other. But not this trio; they're coordinated, cooperative, and above all, trusting of each other.
"But these guys did work together. And they got you wounded."
David nodded. "True. I guess this lot is different. Maybe they're brothers, maybe they are people who have similar ideas and goals but one's thing is for sure: They're highly coordinated and extremely dangerous. The Hobgoblin is the leader and given the fact he managed to wound me and I haven't landed a single attack on him, Hobgoblin is an A-class threat like me." He put the blade down on the coffee table. "I snuck into a ventilation system at the bank and when I webbed up the duffle bags I thought were filled with money, they were filled with pumpkin bombs. I dived in to kill him, but a glider catches me off guard and stabs me.
"I swing to catch him, I'm nearly punched by the Prowler guy and thrown off balance. I web-swing after Hobgoblin, and this Scorpion guy keeps spitting acid on my webs. Hobgoblin throws grenades at me, I throw them back, then Prowler jumps into the picture, and shoots them back at me."
And I lost my powers because I'm stabbed with a blade laced with something but Mom doesn't need to know that. I just got to figure out what's wrong with my powers, create a cure of some kind, and then get back to hunting them down. But there's one thing I can't help but wonder: why did the Hobgoblin stab me with a serum that could cause me to lose my powers? why not stab me with poison? Unless this is a poison but if this is something that just causes me to lose my powers, why take that route? He's obviously not above endangering people but then again, I haven't exactly seen him or any of his cohorts kill people. If he opted not to kill me, is it so I can't pursue him during other bank heists, or is there another reason entirely? So many questions and I believe that the answers will have me asking more questions.
Misa winced. "Crap. This guy sounds extremely dangerous."
"That's an understatement I will admit; he made Green Goblin look like a goddamn pushover."
"So what are you going to do, David?"
"I'm going to find this Hobgoblin, Prowler, and Scorpion, and I'm going to put them out of their fucking miseries."
And with these three new supervillains in town, the Spider-Act has now been initiated. Whether Captain Hardy hates me or not, he'll have no choice but to comply with the truce, which means, I have a license to kill and I'm going to make sure I get all the fun I can get out of that license.
A/N: And with that, the Hobgoblin, Prowler, and Scorpion have been introduced. Thoughts on their first impression? What should I call this trio of supervillains; I'm open to suggestions.