The Green Goblin looked around him at walls that his sled couldn’t detect, but his eyes could. His HUD told him there was nothing in front of him, but his eyes showed him a thrice ringed cage. He struck it with a fist that could punch through concrete and felt his armour nearly fail, the shock absorption of his gauntlets overcome with the force of his punch. He turned to face this freak, this saboteur, this INSECT who was threatening everything he had built. The voice in his head whispered to him, telling him the truths his board would never understand, his researchers would never grasp [kill him and it is over. Kill him and all his power is yours. Kill him and no one will dare stand against us against us. KILL HIM! KILLHIMKILLHIMKILLHIMKILL!].
Norman gave himself to the rage he struggled so long to contain, gave himself to the dark joy that first entered his life with the coming of the Goblin. With laughter on his lips, and all his armour’s governors shut off, he threw himself at this so called “Goblin King”.
“Before you die, you ignorant muscle bound oaf, I want your name. I want to know who I am killing so when I drink a case of vintage champaign I KNOW WHOSE GRAVE TO PISS ON!” Norman swore as he closed, his punches coming fast in combinations chained together faster than bullets from his minigun.
I slapped each punch inward, turning them across his body to slow the next as I stood before him, daring his power, taunting him. He thought this was a fight. Those police manning the checkpoints thought this was a fight, as did the helicopters circling overhead. Three people knew what it was, and they hovered overhead on constructs of magic so potent they might be enough to contain what I did here. This was not a battle. This was a sacrifice. Three people had to die inside this circle if the Ordeal of Justice was to be completed.
I let the glamour I had been locked in my entire life wash over me. I became the boy I grew up, the soldier that went to war, the boy who fought so long against the monster inside only to find out it was real.
“I was Jareth Bowie, a middle classed soldier who fought a war no one cared about for a country we abandoned. I was a Changeling who dreamed he was a man, and still I was better than you.” I said as I stood before him.
He caught me in the chest. Fists that could shatter steel security doors hit the chest of a human trained to near the peak of human potential. I felt ribs shatter, felt them drive into my lungs. I let blood blast from my mouth as his fist buried itself deep. Given only the strength of a normal man, I was helpless to resist. Bent in half, I heard him laughing, saw the blazing madness of the Goblin in his eye, felt his triumph. I would not give up. I could not give up. I reached my arms towards him. His fist caught me in the head, strong enough to smash through a foot of concrete, his fist shattered my skull. I felt my mind go numb, felt my consciousness fade. I saw the face of mom and dad. They tried hard to raise me to be a good man, but I was never a man, and it was a dream I had to wake from. I felt the man die.
The body of Jareth Bowie fell to the ground.
A grinning goblin strode forth, like a court jester. I was dressed in a low cut purple shirt open to mid chest. Black leather pants hugged me tightly, twin golden pistols hung beneath my arms. I forgot how much shorter I was then. I looked like he did, hunched and bandy legged, both our spirits causing our flesh to bend towards the goblin spirit, a hunting beast little different than a wolf, save in degree.
“I was Nick Condon, playing at being superhero. I came to New York city thinking I could make a goblin into a superhero. That a monster like me could actually save people. Then I had to watch as you killed them in front of me, as you sent your cast offs to burn mothers and daughters in their homes before my eyes while I could do nothing but watch.” I said, this time in the body I had when we first fought.
Green Goblin was losing it now, he remembered the beating I had given him wearing this face. The goblin spirit in him saw me and knew me for both its own and a threat. Norman Osborn was still in there, and he heard my words. Heard them and laughed.
“That is what this is about? You are mad because some NOBODIES got in the way and got killed? So a few buildings got burned down. Probably rent controlled dung heaps. Call it urban renewal. The city will thank me. Some brats got killed? Who cares? The little people only exist to consume, and breed. They don’t matter, they have never mattered. If a thousand of them die so that great men can advance science, can advance humanity WHO CARES?” Norman roared as he closed on me.
He kicked with all the augmented power of his super-soldier reshaped legs, aided by the strength enhancing armour his genius crafted. I saw the goblin spirit in his eyes flare as it waited to see this new bodies ribs shatter, see this bodies ribs rip my lungs apart and watch my hearts blood burst from my lips. He didn’t get it. He was a fake goblin, the real spirit of the Goblin called forth by the will and despair of Norman Osborn to take the flawed creation of his failed super soldier serum that turned him into something humanity cannot contain, unless bound to the spirit of a hunter dark and twisted enough to contain it. He was a twisted copy of what I had been born, but what he aped, I was.
I caught his leg with my left arm, letting him rock me backwards as my body twisted and I drove my right fist into his armor covered balls.
“I cared. But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. No matter what I did, I was a monster playing a hero. Your kind always won. Money trumps law, willingness to kill trumps willingness to risk your life to defend. The monsters always win. I wasn’t enough.” I said, blocking his first two punches before delivering a humiliating full power slap to the base of his helmet, spinning him around.
“I will kill you!” He roared as he came in, fully berserk. He came in a charge, throwing me back into the wall beneath my cousin Morgan. I heard her laughter, and saw the shadows of a thousand falling rose petals. I looked up into the face of Dr Stephen Strange, his face slack with horror and fear. I smiled, and opened my arms wide.
“And I will die.” I said simply. Strange was beginning to understand, but Green Goblin wasn’t.
Green Goblin came in, fists hammering. I took punch after punch. His fists rose and fell. I saw the children in the bus dying. I heard the crying and begging of a girl trying to wake her mother in a fire I could not pull them from. I watched in my head as the innocent bystanders he tossed pumpkin bombs at just to buy time died, bodies torn apart by high explosives, tungsten shards and the absolute arrogance of a man who made himself a monster because his ego got bruised when the army turned down one of his creations. Each time his fist hammered down, I saw another innocent die under his bombs, in some collapsing building or fire he created without thought or care of consequence. I felt my ribs go again, but he had to beat me a dozen times before my blood was blasting out of my lips. His rage carried him further. Holding me by the neck, fueled by the memory of me beating him until his mask shattered and all he could do was take it, he glared at me as he hammered his fists into me until the armour on the gauntlets failed, and until my bones shattered, and one eye stuck to his fist as it pulled back. In his face I saw the Goblin he embraced, the power without conscience and consequence. In the reflection of his mask lenses, I saw the goblin I was born. The punishment of the Unseelie fey. The death of legends. Immortalities end. I felt the hero die.
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Norman Osborn thew his head back and laughed. “I AM THE GREEN GOBLIN!” He roared.
I stood behind him. Tall and proud. Upon my head a crown of black thorns bit into my green skin, but the blood the points cut was burned in the pale corpse fire that blazed upon my head. Inhuman eyes, slit like a hunting cat sat in a face formed of nightmare. Proud as any elvish prince, hungry as any dragon, the symmetry of my face was somehow rougher than that of a human, rough carved like a statue stone age hunters would offer before in fear of what howled in the night.
The blood from my shattered chest flowed as thorn vines to wrap my chest in writhing sawing tendrils, shredding my flesh, tearing away weakness and leaving only cruel strength behind. I spread my arms wide and let the thorns remake my flesh in their savagery. When the flesh and been reformed and new scales ran over my skin like a salmon skin done in the finest jade, the thorn vines wove themselves into armour, drinking in the blood they had from me to twist into something like living obsidian thorn armour. Clad in armour black as the night, crowned in the corpse fire of the Unseelie, of the Winter Fey, a spirit born of nightmares to bring the end of dreams, I laughed at last.
Long, low, and cold my laughter froze Green Goblin. He turned at last to face me.
“And I am the Goblin King. Your king has summoned you. Your king has judged you. Now your king will end you.” I said, the Ordeal of Justice reaching at last its peak. I had taken on the justice of the slain, I had offered my own lives, my own dreams, I had given all that I had ever hoped to be to the spirits of the slain, so that I could become what they needed. The Goblin King. The ender of legends. The King of Monsters.
“I KILLED YOU!” He screamed, half in rage, half in terror. He didn’t understand, he chose not to. I was done caring.
“Twice you killed me. You killed the boy who dreamed of being human. You killed the goblin who dreamed of being a hero. There is one death remaining. One death required. You have always been willing to kill innocents to prove you were a monster. Now I will show you how a goblin kills. We do not kill the innocents. We do not kill the weak. We feast on LEGENDS. We are immortalities end. You? You are food.”
This time I moved first. Green Goblin thought it was a fight. It had never been a fight. This was a sacrifice, and it was his turn on the altar.
I grabbed the arm he tried to throw a left jab with. I twisted it until I heard his joint fail, then I twisted until his shoulder tore, then I shattered the elbow to bend it the opposite way. I let him go.
He swung at me desperately with his right. I let the punch land on my jaw, then locked both my hands on his wrist. I stared into his eyes, the blue fury of his madness fades as the Goblin spirit inside of him met the gaze of the Goblin King and broke. My cloak flared into being around my shoulders. Scarlet flames that burned with all the fear of the prey, all the rage of the victims flared out from my shoulders as I let him taste the fear of his victims, their final pain and suffering, the fear that bound their souls until I freed them after death. I let the man inside the monster see his victims, then I twisted his arm until it broke, then I twisted it further until his shoulder tore.
As he screamed, I kicked out first with my right, and then my left, to shatter his knees. As he collapsed to his knees in front of me, I grabbed him by the neck and hammered my fist into his masks chin again and again until the mask shattered. Looking into his eyes, I saw his fear at last, and I rammed my hand down his throat, and tore. My claws tore through flesh until I held his heart in my fist, and staring into his eyes, I ripped it out. I saw the moment the goblin spirit was torn out of him. No more would the chemical legacy of Norman Osborn be linked to the Goblin spirit. Anyone who took it now would simply die. Sometime before the goblin spirit gave up his flesh, the man died, but no one cared.
I held up the heart of Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin.
“HEAR ME. I am the Goblin King. Let the superheroes and supervillains play their games, for I am neither. If you seek to make yourself a monster, if you seek to hunt the innocent people just trying to live in my city, then you will be mine. I am the Goblin King, and I hunt monsters.”
I tore into the heart of Green Goblin, and ate it.
My circle the circle formed of my blood faded and fell. I felt power coursing through me, but the wounds I had taken, each and every one of them still echoed in my flesh. I was remade stronger, remade greater, but the howling endless suffering of my unmaking still screamed in every nerve of my being. I was stronger than a hurricane; I was about to collapse.
“Behold, the Goblin King is crowned!” Shouted Morgan Le Fey, and her circle of thorns and roses dissolved into a shower of red petals.
“Doom is satisfied. Justice has been served.” Spoke Doctor Doom, as with an imperious sweep of his arm, he banished the final circle containing our battle.
Doctor Strange glared at both Morgan and Doom. “You are okay with this murder? You watched this monster kill a man right in front of you.”
“Child, you know nothing of the cost of the power you bear, and you would speak to others of the cost of duty?” Moran Le Fey turned her back on Dr Strange, curtseyed to Doctor Doom, and stepped sideways from the world.
The police advanced cautiously from behind their riot shields. Heavy weapons were trained on me, I could see a half dozen laser targeting lights crawl over my chest armour. I noted one of them was a PAVTRAC designator for a air delivered bomb, glanced upward to note the inbound New York National Guard F-16 and wondered idly if the NYPD knew they were advancing into the blast zone of a bomb designed to kill bunkers. I raised my head and looked at them, crowned in the fire of the dead, cloaked in the fear and rage of the slain, clad in armour grown of my own suffering. I smiled.
Doctor Strange summoned his power and pointed a finger at Doom. “I will not let him hurt those police. Do not test me Victor.”
Doom simply crossed his arms, and turned his head to the side. A limousine with Latverian embassy plates and flags was easing between police to pull up in front of me. The chauffer got out, and opened the door. Sugar got out, looking far more formal than a blood stained battlefield usually rated, but quite nice.
“Come on big guy. You are invited to dine with Doom. He wants to discuss relations or treaties or something.” She shrugged and jerked her head towards the towering figure of Doom standing above the square and its massed police, his cloak fluttering in the wind like a jade declaration of awesome. I bowed my head to him, one ruler to another. He returned it gravely.
In the limousine, protected by the armour of diplomatic plates, we drove through the massed police towards the Latverian embassy.
In the square, Doctor Doom banished his sorcerous disk with a gesture, and took flight with his armoured boots, soaring over our limousine like a declaration that we would not be obstructed. Behind us, Dr Strange stood alone in the air, looking down on a square filled with blood and death, while rose petals danced in the playful winds of the air sprites called by the summoning of so much ancient magic. Looking into the haunted and conflicted face of Dr Strange, you could see both the understanding of the Sorcerer Supreme, and the utter rejection of the modern physician he once was for what had been done. For what had been created.
I am Goblin King. I am no hero. This is my city. If you hunt its people. I am coming for you.