Today, luck was finally on our side.
First, we managed to avoid any casualties during Goblin’s attack.
Then we managed to follow her without being noticed.
The new supervillain’s secret hideout was inside the Osborn mansion itself.
Penny had already suspected something was wrong when we approached the familiar house, and she had become noticeably nervous.
I was nervous too.
The most fragile part of my plan was about to begin, so Gwen was the calmest one among us.
Norma used a secret passage to fly her glider directly into the building.
Naturally, the passage closed immediately afterward, forcing us to find another way inside.
We had to move very carefully.
The mansion’s security system was top-notch.
Fortunately, getting inside wasn’t particularly difficult with my abilities.
That didn’t mean we could relax.
The place was filled with ridiculously expensive furniture, artwork, and other valuables.
There was no way all of it was simply lying around without some kind of protection.
What worked in our favor was that Sam and Penny had both been here several times before, so we had at least some idea of where we were going.
We moved silently and carefully.
Honestly, I couldn’t even imagine how exactly the supervillain had secured her hideout.
Part of me was mentally prepared for a turret to suddenly pop out of the ceiling, spray us with bullets, and turn us into human colanders.
So far, though, everything was quiet.
At least for me.
The girls had clearly heard something.
Gwen carefully tugged on my sleeve and pointed to the right, away from the direction we had originally been heading.
All I could do was silently nod and follow them.
We crept down the richly decorated hallway.
I already knew how luxurious the place was from Sam’s memories, but it was still difficult not to be impressed.
And this was only one wing of a mansion that was far from small.
Before Gabriella left, only two people had lived here, not counting the servants.
The Osborns had other relatives, including other wives and children from her late father.
However, after her husband’s death, Norma had cut off all contact with them.
She had even taken back her maiden name, both for herself and her daughter.
Meanwhile, we were getting closer to the source of the sound the girls had heard.
At first, it was barely audible.
But the closer we got, the clearer the words became.
I was beginning to worry that Norma had somehow acquired an unexpected accomplice.
That concern turned out to be premature.
When we looked into the room, we saw Osborn talking to herself.
Or rather, she was talking to her helmet.
The sight was amusing in a way, but it was also creepy as hell.
Naturally, we couldn’t hear whatever Norma’s second personality was saying to her.
But judging by the woman’s confused expression, she was only now realizing what she had done.
“Did I do this?”
Osborn stared at the newspaper in shock.
I couldn’t see what was written in it from where I was standing, but I could guess that it was an article about the incident at the testing facility.
Osborn stared intently at the helmet, listening to its response.
I glanced at the girls.
Gwen was focused and ready, waiting only for the signal to attack.
Penny, however, was clearly in shock.
She hadn’t expected this scenario at all.
Of course, she must have become suspicious when Goblin somehow turned out to have a secret passage inside this house.
But having suspicions was one thing.
Seeing those suspicions confirmed with her own eyes was something else entirely.
Overall, there wasn’t anything particularly important or interesting in the conversation between Goblin and Norma.
The former was trying to drag the woman over to the Dark Side, while the latter was slowly losing what remained of her sanity.
I placed a hand on Penny’s shoulder, trying to calm her down and offer some support.
Parker looked up at me.
For a moment, she stared into the lenses of my mask as if she were trying to see something hidden behind them.
Ah, right.
My relationship with the younger Osborn.
From Penny’s perspective, this situation had to be even harder for me than it was for her.
She believed the love between Sam and Gabriella had been genuine.
In reality, Sam had only dated Norma’s daughter because of her money.
As for me, I didn’t particularly care about her at all.
I simply didn’t want her to become the second Goblin.
She seemed like a decent person, but I had never even met her personally.
Penny finally stopped staring at me. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
I had no idea what she had seen behind my mask, but apparently, it had given her some strength.
Parker gave me a firm nod, showing that she was ready to act.
Gwen and I exchanged glances and confirmed our readiness with a nod as well.
I made the first move.
My plan was to teleport behind Norma and knock her out with the stun gun.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
The woman quickly grabbed the helmet she had been having such an interesting conversation with and smashed it directly into my face.
What the hell was with my luck lately?
This was already the second opponent with good enough reflexes to react to my teleportation in time.
The need to acquire new abilities had suddenly become even more urgent than I’d thought.
If things continued like this, I would die before I ever encountered a truly terrifying threat, let alone had a chance to fight one.
Norma was already preparing to finish me off, simply lifting her foot to stomp on my face.
I wasn’t about to find out how well I could withstand a blow from someone who had injected herself with a super-soldier serum.
I quickly teleported to the other side of the room.
The girls weren’t about to stand there and watch me get wiped across the floor, so they joined the fight.
Even then, Norma held her own surprisingly well.
If Spider-Girl had been alone, Goblin might actually have had a chance at victory.
Against both of them, however, her chances weren’t great.
Gwen managed to knock Osborn off her feet with impressive skill, while Penny quickly covered her in webbing and pinned her to the floor.
All that remained was for me to walk over and knock the villain unconscious with the stun gun.
Even that took several attempts.
Norma kept struggling, alternating between showering us with some truly creative profanity and breaking into the Green Goblin’s trademark insane laughter.
Fortunately, Penny and Gwen remained alert.
Whenever it looked like Osborn was about to break free, they immediately added more webbing.
“Phew.”
I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a loud breath of relief once we finally managed to put the villain to sleep.
“Mrs. Osborn… how could this happen?”
Penny whispered sadly.
“Hey, don’t get discouraged, okay?”
Gwen tried to comfort her friend.
“But what happens now?”
Parker still looked upset.
“She did so much…”
She lowered her voice.
“Poor Gabriella.”
Damn it.
We didn’t have time for this kind of despair.
Time was working against us.
I didn’t think Norma would stay unconscious for very long, which meant we needed to find her hidden laboratory as quickly as possible and determine whether the girls could make an antidote.
“It might not be as straightforward as it looks.”
I drew their attention back to me.
“You saw how she was acting yourself. Can you really imagine Norma Osborn flying around on a glider while laughing like a maniac?”
“And that strength.”
“She knocked me to the ground with a single hit, and she held her own against both of you pretty well.”
“All of this reminds me of the Connors situation.”
That got through to Penny.
The possibility that her best friend’s mother might actually be innocent, or at least not entirely responsible, immediately brought some light back into her eyes.
We began searching for the secret room.
I remembered the scene from the movie where Harry Osborn found it by smashing a mirror, so I started looking there.
It didn’t take long to find the button that opened the hidden passage.
“Oh my God.”
Gwen gasped when she saw what was inside the supervillain’s hideout.
I understood her reaction.
If I hadn’t been prepared for what I was about to see, mine probably wouldn’t have been much different.
Penny, however, didn’t react at all.
She remained focused and silent.
There was an entire stockpile of grenades, rockets, and machine guns.
There were also countless upgrades for the glider and various devices whose purposes I only vaguely understood.
We were damn lucky Goblin had decided to arm herself with nothing but the “pumpkins.”
If she’d taken even a couple more weapons from this enormous arsenal, our chances of winning would have dropped dramatically.
Someone needed to stay behind and guard Norma, so I volunteered.
The girls had a much stronger scientific background than I did, which meant they would obviously be far more useful in the laboratory.
“Yes!” New chapters come out on g.com first.
Penny’s triumphant shout came about ten minutes later.
“We found it!”
Her mood was considerably brighter than before.
“Here.”
Parker handed me a stack of papers filled with notes.
There were dozens of formulas and technical terms that meant absolutely nothing to me.
“I don’t understand a damn thing.”
I honestly admitted it and handed the papers back.
“These are laboratory journals. According to the notes, Oscorp was trying to recreate the super-soldier serum.”
Penny was practically talking a mile a minute from excitement.
“The same serum that turned Susan Rogers into Captain America.”
“If I understood everything correctly, Mrs. Osborn became like this because of an error in the formula.”
“Can you make an antidote?”
That was the question I’d been waiting to ask.
“We can.”
Gwen appeared from the secret passage and answered instead of Penny.
“The notes are extremely detailed.”
“But it will take time.”
“How much?”
I asked tensely, already knowing I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“I don’t know.”
Even through my mask, I could see Stacy thoughtfully biting her lip.
“Several days, at least. It could even take weeks or months. The formula is too complicated for me to give you any guarantees.”
That was very bad.
Goblin could cause an unbelievable amount of trouble in a few months.
We couldn’t simply leave her free.
Who knew what she might do in an attempt to get revenge on us?
Lock her up somewhere?
Where?
I couldn’t exactly keep her tied up in the basement of her own house.
At this rate, it would be easier to hand her over to the police and then deal with whatever the Queenpin did after taking control of Oscorp.
There was also the option of killing her…
“But we can make something temporary right now.”
Parker hadn’t lost her composure.
She flipped through several pages and pushed them toward Stacy.
“Look here. If we use this, we should be able to suppress the effects of the serum for at least a couple of days.”
“That will give us enough time to create a proper antidote.”
Now this was the Penny I liked.
She had completely fallen apart when she saw Osborn in that condition.
It was good to know there was still a way to help her.
Parker really was a good person.
She genuinely liked helping others.
The proposed solution was a huge relief.
Otherwise, I had already started mentally preparing myself for some of the darkest and most radical ways of dealing with Osborn.
“Hmm.”
Gwen looked over the papers carefully before giving her verdict.
“This might actually work.”
“Does everything we need for it appear in here?”
I tried not to get my hopes up too soon.
“Most likely.”
Stacy quickly eased my concerns.
“But I need to warn you right now. It won’t be reliable.”
“There are no guarantees that everything will work exactly as intended.”
I nodded, accepting the information.
So, for however long the girls needed to create a proper antidote, I would have to keep an eye on Osborn.
And that was only half the problem.
Even if we managed to cure Norma completely, Queenpin wasn’t going to simply give up.
She would continue putting pressure on Oscorp, and there was no telling what Norma might try to do in response.
“Then we shouldn’t waste any time.”
I wrapped up the discussion.
“Get started. I’ll watch her.”
Penny, practically bursting with impatience, was the first to fly back into the secret room.
Gwen followed her, although at a much more leisurely pace.
I stayed behind in the middle of the thoroughly wrecked room, standing beside the unconscious woman who was completely wrapped in webbing.