The first few seconds after are just a blur. Chunks of broken concrete spray up from around the steps at the southern edge of the square, smashing into cars and blasting through the ground floor windows of the buildings across the street. They both plant their feet against the shockwave that ripples out toward them, the asphalt rising up like it is suddenly liquid and rolling. Sam yanks Rogers toward him away from the blast, and Rogers draws Sam to his broad chest in the same moment, raising the black wheel case over both their heads as he twists to put his body between the Wilsons and the explosion. Gideon throws his arms around Sarah and tackles her to the ground, her strawberries smushed beneath them. The air all around them is alive with pain, confusion, and fear, and Sam doesn't even have to time to think before he finds himself running toward the noise and the smoke and the panicked mass of bodies trying to get away from the epicenter of destruction because those people are hurt and they need help.
Rogers is right on his heels, propelled by the same soldier's instinct that tells him they need to be in the thick of it pulling bodies out and rendering aid. He drags a woman to her feet before she can be trampled to death, and Sam stops to apply pressure to a man's leg where some kind of shrapnel has punched a hole through his thigh. He ends up using his belt as an impromptu tourniquet and helps the man limp out of the way and into the harried hands of another Good Samaritan on the opposite sidewalk before jumping the black metal park fence to get back into the pulsing mob when something zips by overhead, a streak of forest green and chrome.
Another explosion goes off closer to the intersection of 14th Street and Fourth Avenue, and Sam hits the dirt beside the still body of a local beat cop as smoke billows up from the area near the subway station and pieces of the entrance go flying. His ears are ringing, but he thinks he can make out the sound of someone beginning to laugh over all the screaming and the incoming sirens.
It makes his blood run cold and his breath catch. Sam had never heard it live before because he hadn't been in New York at the time, but he could never forget the sound of that laugh filtered through a shaky recording and a shitty network connection, remembers the mad pitch and roll of it raising the hairs on the back of his neck.
That green blur returns, slowing down as it nears where Rogers is sprinting out of the park to the east of the George Washington statue. Sam knows what he'll see even before it comes into full focus: a man in a high-tech suit of body armor and a gleaming mask, crouched atop a weaponized hoverboard with feet spread for balance and body coiled to strike. The stance, with one gloved hand gripping the glider's front rim and his other arm thrown back, and that costume are iconic now after having been all over the front of every newspaper last year.
There is no mistaking it, with that terrible laugh, for anyone but the Green Goblin.
For a moment, Sam is too stunned to move. This shouldn't be happening, because everybody knows that the Green Goblin is dead. He and Spider-Man had one last big, knock-out fight on the waterfront that ended with the demolition of an Oscorp warehouse. They pulled twelve bodies out of the East River north of Queens last April, including Norman Osborn's.
"Oh, no," the Green Goblin croons, his mocking sing-song rasp of a voice projected through some kind of amplifier beneath the mask. Something on the glider activates, and a panel on the front slides back to reveal a dark row of wide, short gun barrels. "If only Spider-Man were here to save you. . ."
"Rogers!" Sam screams, pushing himself up off the ground, but the warning is lost under the rapid machine gun fire from the hoverboard. Rogers holds his ground with that stupid wheel case raised like whatever is inside might be solid enough to provide adequate cover from the spray of 7.62 mm rounds chewing up the earth towards him. Sam stares in horror as the Green Goblin's attack blasts through the statue, severing George Washington from his horse at the waist, and finds Rogers with unerring accuracy, the bullets ripping through the case's fabric cover and —
And pinging harmlessly off the red, white, and blue metal shield it had been concealing.
Sam knows that shield, too, has seen photos of it a hundred times in history books and its likeness carefully rendered in the brilliant color of countless Army recruiting posters. The weight and power of this one, the way the red and white ring its blue center with that stark five-pointed star burning there like every proud symbol of freedom Sam's ever known, can't be confused with a thin replica.
I crashed a plane, Rogers said. In the ice. Was overseas and KIA for awhile, now everybody's dead and there's no home to go back to. A lot of things suddenly make sense in the breathless moment that follows. The Eastern Front and the Pearl Harbor reference and the attempted bombing of Times Square, his familiar heroic jawline and even that goddamn name. This isn't just some Army officer down on his luck. He didn't just play Captain America in a movie.
It shouldn't be possible. It's even crazier than Sam thinking he can talk to birds now. Captain America has been dead for over seventy years and neither his body nor the wreckage of the Valkyrie were ever found. But somehow, against all odds and any semblance of logic or sanity, Sam is watching the original Captain America, Steve fucking Rogers, lower that shield amidst the smoking remains of a Union Square statue in 2012.
The Green Goblin seems just as surprised by this turn of events. He pauses, barrels smoking below his feet, and begins to straighten. There's no way Sam can sit idly by while this nutjob wreaks havoc on his city and terrorizes the innocent civilians of New York. Taking advantage of the Green Goblin's distraction, Sam scrambles up and takes a flying leap at the back of the glider.
It's gotta be the adrenaline, he thinks, as the rim of the glider hits his diaphragm and his hands scrabble for purchase on the metal. Sam is strong and fast and has kept in decent shape since his discharge from the Air Force, but even he is aware that that wasn't a jump a normal guy like him should have been able to make. Still, his fingers curl around the Green Goblin's ankles and he lets his weight drop back, trusting gravity to assist him in knocking down the villain.
The Green Goblin lets out an undignified squawk and topples off the glider. They fall back to the pavement with pained grunts. Without direction from its rider, the hoverboard spins aimlessly for a few seconds and then crashes down beside them with a clatter.
Sam punches the Green Goblin in the face, but the mask is hard and unyielding, and he only succeeds in busting his knuckles open. They grapple, turning over and over again as each man tries to gain the upper hand. The Green Goblin ends up on top, straddling Sam's torso. He reels back as if to strike, and Sam catches movement behind him where Rogers is whirling around with his shield like an oversized discus in a tight, controlled spin that ends in a blindingly fast throw at the same time Sam gets a face full of military-grade capsicum.
The shield slices through the air into the Green Goblin's armored back with enough momentum and force to knock him off of Sam. He lay, stunned, beside him as Sam rolls away and up onto his hands and knees, face red and burning, eyes and nose streaming; he coughs and gags and spits. It feels like he can't breathe or see, like his whole face has been set on fire and his eyes are swelling shut.
Rogers never makes it to their position to follow-through on the attack, though. Something white hits Rogers then, trapping his feet and holding his legs in place. It holds fast as Rogers struggles futilely to free himself. Sam jerks his head up, and blurry and distorted as his vision might be, he knows without a doubt that whoever just joined the fight is emphatically not their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
The newcomer touches down on the street below the brick and gold facade of the Metronome, a smear of red and black from head to toe that stands slowly from the three-point crouch he landed in. He ignores Rogers, whose hands are getting stuck to what might be webbing where he is trying to rip the sticky substance off his boots, and begins walking toward Sam and the prone figure of the Green Goblin with slow, deliberate steps.
"On your left!" Someone chirps at him, and Sam grits his teeth at the pain and the impending threat. His hands slide through the dirt and rubble until they find the body of the dead policeman on his left, and he fumbles with the service pistol until he gets it free from its holster.
The newcomer pulls the Green Goblin back to his feet, puts one arm around the villain's waist and hefts him easily. The Green Goblin makes a strained noise of complaint and settles his own arm over the newcomer's shoulders as they right the glider before both stepping aboard. A few ribs are probably broken from the shield strike, and Sam would hazard a guess that something may have been punctured as a result from the wet quality of his wheezing.
This close, Sam can see that the newcomer is dressed like Spider-Man in a scarlet red suit with a black spider emblazoned across the chest, four of its legs turned up to meet the black fabric that stretches across the man's collarbone and shoulders. His cowl is entirely black with large, glassy red lenses in the stylized shape of eyes.
This close, there's no way Sam can miss when he raises his arm, stretching out the retention cord as far as he can, and takes careful aim. It's awkward, sure, and his hands are trembling and his lungs keep hitching, but he feels remarkably steady considering he hasn't shot so much as a paper target since his last deployment. The red Spider-Man turns his head toward Sam sharply. There's no way to tell his expression, to know whether or not their eyes meet, but Sam knows that the red Spider-Man sees him and the pistol.
His hand comes up in an odd gesture, and there's a wad of webbing jamming the muzzle before Sam can finish pulling the trigger.
"This isn't over!" the Green Goblin declares in a gasp, blood dripping from beneath the seam of his mask. "You've bought yourselves a reprieve, but mark my words: we're just getting started. Surrender Spider-Man to me, or I'll rip New York apart to find him!"
And then the glider is off, rising up out of Union Square and zooming off towards Upper Manhattan.