Clark, basking in sunlight, let out a long satisfied breath.
"Whew... fully charged. Feels like if the purple freak showed up right now, I could rip his jaw off and use it like a football."
That full-body sense of saturation felt even better than one of his mother's big home-cooked dinners.
He looked down at the blue Earth below with nothing but warmth in his eyes.
The timing felt about right, so Clark followed the same route back.
It was time to go home and get some sleep.
Meanwhile, in an uninspected underground Oscorp lab somewhere in Manhattan...
The Green Goblin had now completely taken control of Norman Osborn's body.
He stood staring at the damaged armor laid out before him, especially the chest plate, where a deeply sunken handprint was still visible.
A few days earlier, that so-called S-Man had beaten him down with effortless contempt, crushing both his dignity and the power he had sacrificed everything to obtain.
"Why... why?!" the Goblin shrieked, half-mad. "The power I fought so hard for! How can it be surpassed so easily?! Everything I chased, everything I built, passed over like it meant nothing!"
He stared at himself in the mirror.
He looked like a demon.
Then he burst into laughter.
"Ha! Yes, I can't beat him! But I've found his weakness! Even if I'm not worth a single finger of his!"
"Even a god like that has a weak point. That smug monster. Those pathetic mortal emotions. And smoke bombs!"
The Goblin had gone fully off the rails now. No sane person would look at Clark and think, Yes, I should attack the fragile human side of his life.
But the Goblin was no longer sane.
And worse, he had started to guess who they all were.
He had gotten hold of the webbing Peter and the others fired.
The residue came from the night they fought him, bits of web fluid that had stuck inside gaps in his armor and failed to fully dissolve.
"If the so-called 'S-Man' chose that moment to step in and save those three little spiders and that nosy old reporter, then they must be connected. Closely. Personally."
For all his madness, Norman's mind was still brilliant underneath it.
The compounds being analyzed on the screen, all those complicated chemical traces, were child's play to him.
"A clever formula," the Goblin said, reading the data. "But still just cleverness in miniature."
His thoughts raced faster and faster, linking things he had never dared put together before, until suddenly his mind snapped into alignment.
Then came the laughter.
"Ha ha ha ha! Of course! Of course! I'm a genius! I should have seen it sooner!"
He kicked over a machine worth millions. Glassware shattered across the floor.
"Those super-spiders in the lab that suddenly lost their abilities and died... they bit someone! The people they bit were the students visiting that day! They got the power! Power that should have been mine!"
Scenes from that day at Oscorp flashed through his mind in rapid sequence.
"No wonder... no wonder they developed that kind of strength so quickly. And the webbing too!"
Now that his hatred and madness had sharpened his focus, the Goblin's chain of deduction became chillingly clear.
"If those three costumed pests swinging around the city are Peter Parker and the others... then what about the tall one who was there with them that day? The one built like a damn bear, always pretending to be some harmless idiot. Clark Parker."
"And then there's Ben Parker. The Daily Bugle editor who destroyed my company, destroyed everything I built. They're all Parkers. They're one family!"
"Richard Parker! It all comes back to you! You ruined everything!"
Every clue. Every shard. Every loose thread.
Inside the Goblin's deranged but brilliant mind, they all clicked into place, forming a truth so perfect it made his whole body tremble with excitement.
Why had the S-Man suddenly shown up in Manhattan and risked exposing himself to stop that missile? Because he needed to save Ben Parker inside the building.
Why had the S-Man dropped from the sky and swatted him away just as he was about to kill the red-and-blue spider? Because that Spider-Man was his precious little brother, Peter Parker.
"Clark Parker... you're that monster, aren't you?" the Goblin hissed. "You're the one pretending to hide in plain sight. You're the 'S-Man' who's been making all of New York dance for him."
He walked deeper into the lab, toward a whiteboard covered in pinned photographs.
Ben Parker. May Parker. Peter. Clark. Eddie, who had recently moved into the Parker house.
All candid personal photos.
They were background files the Goblin had paid heavily to acquire, originally meant for his revenge campaign against the Daily Bugle.
He reached out and slashed one finger across a photo of Peter and Clark laughing together in the backyard over a barbecue grill, tearing Clark's face neatly in half.
"In a direct physical fight, sure. I admit it. I can't beat you, you freak."
"But what if I don't fight you head-on? What if I wait until you're gone?"
"What if I take your soft little family, your righteous old father, your cookie-baking mother, and strap them all to custom high-yield pumpkin bombs?"
"When you come running back like a stray dog and all you find is scorched meat and bone fragments, will that calm, superior expression still be on your face? Will you still look down on everyone like some merciful god?"
"No. You'll break. You'll lose your mind. You'll feel the same despair I felt."
He threw back his head and laughed.
Then he turned toward the armory deeper in the lab.
Over the last few days, he had poured himself into it.
Two full crates of improved pumpkin bombs, each upgraded with white phosphorus and aggressive nerve agents.
Smoke bombs designed specifically for Clark.
A rebuilt green glider fitted with machine guns and cutting blades.
He suited up in a reinforced spare Goblin armor, one with even better protection than the last.
He fastened high-explosive bombs and smoke bombs all along his belt.
The next morning, at the Parker house...
The New York sky was unusually bright and clear.
Peter and his friends were all at Midtown High, trapped in a tedious World History class while Peter secretly sketched improvements for a new web-shooter design under his desk.
At home, only Ben and May remained.
It was one of Ben's rare scheduled days off.
Old man Jameson, that legendary tightwad, had finally taken pity after raking in mountains of newspaper sales and had generously granted his star reporter two paid days off.
Though really, it was Ben himself who didn't want the break.
He still wanted to keep exposing the darkness in the world.