The carnival’s sudden turn had detonated in the afternoon, and by evening it belonged to the whole world, because half the crowd had recorded the explosions on their phones, and the footage of the Green Goblin trading blows with Spider-Man had already blown past a hundred million views online.
An unambiguous act of terror had planted its shadow across America.
If Iron Man’s debut had opened the age of superheroes, then the Goblin incident announced, to everyone at once, that the age of the super-criminal had arrived right behind it, quiet as a tide.
The public was waking up to an uncomfortable census: beyond the mutants they already feared, the world apparently held *this* kind of superhuman too, the kind that broke their ordinary lives apart and threatened them where they stood, and somehow that was more frightening than the mutants had ever been.
The carnival’s casualties ran past a hundred.
The dread curdled into fury, and the fury organized itself into a single storm of public opinion and rolled straight at the White House, demanding to know what, exactly, the security apparatus had been doing.
And in the same breath, the whole internet turned to watch Spider-Man.
He was, arguably, the first superhero since Captain Steve to leap fully into the public’s field of view.
His name had been circulating around New York before the carnival, sure, but plenty of people had written him off as a stuntman chasing attention, and then the battle footage landed, and nobody was writing anything off anymore.
Paper after paper crowned him with the same title, New York’s good neighbor, and Peter, wearing the name at last with full legitimacy, was quietly selling exclusive “self-portraits” of the neighbor at a very good price.
Where there was a big winner, there had to be a loser, and the loser was the attack’s own author.
The Goblin had killed his two shareholders and bought the company nothing; worse, with certain interested parties fanning the flames, word broke that several pieces of the Goblin’s technology traced straight back to Osborn Industries, and the public’s fury swung its muzzle around and opened fire on Oscorp.
The stock cratered in step with Stark’s, and if nobody took drastic measures, neither chart was coming back.
Chairman Norman never showed his face.
It was Harry, the son, who stood up in front of the employees to steady them, and his standing there slowed the slide, a little.
“…That concludes today’s emergency bulletin.
In related news, from Stark Industries: co-founder Obadiah Stane has assumed management of the company.
There is still no word on Tony Stark.” “Very America,” Trist observed from the sofa, where he and Gali sat watching the anchor work through the day’s catastrophes.
In his old world, America had made the news daily over guns alone.
In *this* America, ordinary shootings no longer even rated a broadcast slot, because measured against superhumans and armored madmen and vanishing billionaires, a shooting wasn’t on the same axis anymore.
The NYPD, meanwhile, was being worked half to death.
That morning had wrapped itself up quickly: a few words traded with Chief Stacy, and then everyone needing somewhere quiet to land, so he and Gwen had simply exchanged numbers and gone their separate ways.
As for the little white rabbit that had hopped up to his lips entirely of its own accord, he was in no hurry at all.
The days were long.
“Hey, hey.
Is there any more of that drink from before?” Gali swung on his hand and deployed maximum cuteness.
Because she remembered that vial *fondly*: the taste had been nothing special, but the energy in it had outclassed every living thing on this planet.
*Flick.* He caught her square on the forehead with one finger.
“Drink a few more of those and you really will turn stupid.” He left her to her welling eyes, entirely unmoved, and went into the study, where the reference pages were already laid out and waiting, because a decision had finished forming on the ride home: the third weekly issue of Shonen Jump was going to carry two *long-running* comics.
Tomorrow was only issue two, and issue three still sat a stretch away, but the Goblin attack had shifted his whole sense of the clock.
The super-criminals were surfacing now.
Spider-Man’s future enemies alone made a respectable list, and behind them, every demon and monster in this universe’s catalog was queued up for the stage.
It might even be time to think about a *second* magazine, and bait every water in the pond at once.
Behind him, the broadcast rolled on, the anchor’s face warming into a feature piece.
“Today we sat down with Reed Richards, hailed since childhood as a prodigy, holding doctorates across engineering, mathematics, and physics from a string of the world’s great universities.
One week from now, he and three fellow astronauts will…” Gali, thoroughly bored by men with degrees, switched the channel to cartoons without touching the remote or moving from her spot.
A while later, the doorbell rang, and a deep voice came through the door with it.
“Your delivery’s here.” Trist set down his pen and headed for the front door, and on the way past the sofa, Gali gave the door one sideways glance, rolled her eyes at it, and turned back to her cartoons.
*…Huh?* That was strange enough to register even mid-stride.
Food had arrived at the door, and Gali had not launched herself at it like a customs dog hitting a suitcase.
When had *that* ever happened?
He was surprised for exactly one second, thought nothing further of it, and pulled the door open with a jab ready on his tongue.
“About time.
That’s some seriously slow delivery.” “My apologies, sir…” The courier’s head came up slowly, and between one word and the next, the mild professional politeness on his face froze over into something with frost on it.
“…there is no delivery.” Their eyes met, and a cold light flashed.