NOVEL NEXT The Green Threat, part 2
She wasn't in time to avert disaster. Not all of Osborne's former colleagues had managed to leave the balcony yet. Some of them who hesitated too long were instantly killed by the blast of powerful charges. But the troubles did not end there. The ornamental structure, not designed for such a load, could not endure. The stone bas-reliefs collapsed downward, right on the crowd of spectators who had not yet had time to take cover.
Not paying attention to the villain leaving the scene in a hurry, Gwen rushed to save people. She managed to catch one of the largest debris with a spider web and suspend it, but the girl was unable to intercept all. But just when she thought it was all over, a whole host of dark, bluish tentacles shot out from the ground toward the wreckage. In an instant, the symbiote, doing its host's bidding, used up half its energetic resources to explosively gain mass and shield civilians under the rubble.
Thanks to the coordinated actions of Gwen and Bobby, deaths among the victims were avoided, but many were injured in varying degrees of severity. But even here, the superheroines were able to prove themselves. With the help of the web, medical knowledge and Venom's abilities, they provided first aid to the injured until the arrival of the ambulances.
Enraged beyond imagination, the Green Goblin was returning to her hiding place at the Osborn mansion. Though she'd partially succeeded in her plan, it was the fact that she'd had to flee from the upstart that infuriated the villain.
"Spiderwoman," the Goblin hissed angrily, slipping her helmet off her head, "you're going to regret getting in my way."
The woman tossed the helmet aside in irritation and grimaced, feeling the pain of fresh abrasions on her face. "I need to refine the helmet so it doesn't dig into my cheekbones on impact," she thought as she touched her fingers to her face.
Just then her keen hearing picked up an extraneous noise that had no place in her home and, especially, in the villain's secret hiding place. It was the familiar sound of the Spiderwoman's flying web.
But Norma had no time to react. Two branched webs encompassed her arms, restricting her movements. Before she could take action to free herself, the unseen enemy fired several more shots, chaining the bound villain to the walls of the shelter.
"Spiderwoman!" hissed Osborne. "You shouldn't have come here..."
But she cut herself short when she saw that her new adversary wasn't a newly minted superheroine, or even a woman.
"Wrong," Peter told her, stepping out of the shadows. "But closer than you think."
"How did you end up here?" Norma was surprised, but quickly pulled herself together and pushed the doubts aside. "Never mind, you shouldn't have come here. If this wretched web is all you've got, you're in big trouble."
The woman reactivated the blades hidden in the suit and began to get rid of the restraints. She didn't manage to cut all the threads, some of the blades couldn't reach, but with extreme muscle strain the villainess was almost able to tear the rest.
She was about to break free when a new adversary interrupted her.
"He's still got me," came a voice from behind Norma.
Deadpool kicked up the villain's legs, forcing her to her knees, and then clamped her hands behind her back to tie her wrists with a more secure wire than a spider's web. Wanda put one of her swords to the villain's throat with very unambiguous intentions.
Catching her partner's gaze, Wilson ran the thumb of her free hand across her throat, suggesting a radical solution. But the boy only shook his head in the negative, to which Deadpool theatrically rolled her eyes:
"Oh, come on, it always comes down to this in the end. Stans you didn't want to kill either, remember? I'm not going to console you when she gets free and kills someone," Wanda said as she disarmed her prisoner, savagely disabling the glider and the weaponry in her suit.
"You won't have to," Parker promised grimly, giving Norma a surprisingly cruel look while Wilson was distracted and unable to see the look on his face. His voice sounded as if he'd already made up his mind about the captured villain.
"Besides," Peter continued, sharply changing the mood of his speech, "if Norma Osborne disappears now, there's nothing to stop HammerTech from taking over her company. And even though OzCorp is no gift, if their secret designs, like these weapons and the serum she injected herself, end up in the hands of that idiot... I think he'll just sell them to the highest bidder."
Speculating about the fate of a multibillion-dollar company didn't stop Parker from bossing around Osborne's computer.
"OzCorp has such a powerful defense," Peter told his listeners, "but Norma has left extra ways for herself in case she has to act secretly from everyone. How ironic: her paranoia would play into our hands. I couldn't crack OzCorp's security myself. Okay, password's in, hmm, double biometric authentication... I need her fingers and retina. No, not separately. Stop screwing around, Wilson."
"Big deal," Deadpool snorted. "Finger more, finger less, who's counting them anyway? Certainly not me."
Nevertheless, the mercenary gave up her bloodthirsty intentions and dragged the suspiciously silent Osborn to the desk, forcing her to unlock the system.
"What the... what's going on here," Norma suddenly spoke up after Wilson began dragging her back. Both Peter and Wanda immediately noticed that Osborne's tone of voice and manner of speech had completely changed, as if she were a completely different woman, and she looked confused. "You-you're my son's classmate, Peter Parker, I remember you! What are you doing in my office? And why am I tied up? What's going on?"
As she spoke, the woman's bewildered tone changed to a demanding one, the way she was used to addressing her surroundings.
"That's a lot of psychos per square meter," Deadpool remarked self-critically.
Peter noticed, too, that Norma wasn't acting. No, it was as if she had suddenly forgotten the events of the last few hours and was once again not a villain in a super-suit, but Norma Osborne.
The Green Goblin realized that she could not cope with the situation and pushed out another personality - a workaholic, a business lady and a loving, albeit in a peculiar way, mother: Norma Osborne, to save the situation. "We know, we've been there," the guy grinned to himself.
"For that matter, you can admire your artwork for now," Parker said to Norma as he turned on the second screen to report on today's incident.
Norma looked at the screen bewildered at first, but soon there were signs of realization on her face. She looked around as best she could at what she was wearing.
"No! It can't be! That's not me!" The woman shivered, almost slitting her own throat against the mercenary's sword as she did so.
"Well, in a sense you're right. The drug you used on yourself has obviously affected your brain," Peter replied without looking at Norma. He had just gotten to the serum files on the woman's computer. "Yes, just as I suspected: another attempt to recreate the super-soldier formula. It's pretty sketchy, I'd say."
"But you've already managed to fix it once, haven't you?" Wilson asked in a bored tone, beginning to strangle the prisoner. "You saved that professor, didn't you?"
"I don't know," Peter admitted, when Deadpool Osborne lost consciousness, "Connors used a formula in her serum that originally suggested the possibility of a reverse process, but it's different here."
While Parker was explaining the nuances, Deadpool twisted Norma's arms and legs, so that even if she found new surprises in her armor, it would be impossible to use them.
"Then we'll have to kill her! We've already talked about this," Wanda said, sitting down on the table and shaking her hands off. "She saw your face, she hates your friend Spider-Woman. It's obvious she's even more dangerous to you than Fisk."
"No, you can't kill her. I told you, she's the head of OzCorp, and she's my friend's mother, too. She's been a decent person all her life, there's a big difference between her and Fisk. Wilma Fisk is a criminal, and Osborne has changed because of it," Parker entered some commands to open a secret door in the room. "If we can't get Norma Osborne back to her old self, then we just need to get control of... what do you call her evil alter ego?"
He asked, turning to Deadpool.
"Green Goblin?" Parker suggested.
"It sucks," the mercenary judged his suggestion, and rushed inside the hiding place.