“Harry, you’ll hurt my father?”
Dante hadn’t seen Gwen this furious even when she was about to stomp that entire symbiote biker gang into the ground. Maybe he had gone too far provoking Harry. The boy had been pushed past the point where restraint was possible and all venom hidden inside him was spilled out.
“It was all a plot,” Harry snarled from behind the goblin mask, eyes locked onto Dante. “You wanted to confess everything to Gwen.”
“You already figured it out. The son of a genius can’t be so stupid, after all.”
The Anti-Venom suit rippled across Gwen’s body as she walked toward Harry. “You tried to kill at the mall. Now you want to go after my dad?”
The betrayal of their friendship seed entirely secondary to her right now. Everything was eclipsed by the protective feeling she harbored for father, and the deep hatred she held for Norman. The mad billionaire had nearly destroyed her father’s life. Harry had just promised to finish the job.
Harry’s eyes behind the mask shone with twisted excitent. Harry wasn’t afraid of Gwen in the slightest. If anything, he seed more energized by the fact that the pretense was finally over.
“Gwen,” he sneered. “You took my dad from . It’s only fair I take yours away from you.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Gwen spoke softly. “But I wish I had, Harry. He was a scumbag. A narcissist. The only thing I regret is that he didn’t suffer longer.”
Harry laughed, which was distorted through the mask. “I guess you’re right. Dad really was a terrible man. But don’t you worry, Gwen. I’ll be worse than him. The killings at the mall were just the start. The Green Goblin is just getting ward up—”
Gwen didn’t wait for him to finish his monologue. Two thick webs of white symbiote matter shot from her wrists, latching onto Harry’s shoulders. She yanked at full force, ripping him off his feet. As he flew toward her, a devastating kick landed on his chin, flipping him through the air. He crashed onto his back with a heavy thud.
She cracked her knuckles. “I’m not going to make this easy for you.”
Harry got back to his feet swiftly and rolled his neck until it cracked. “You’re both stupid if you think I ca here to fight two on one. I’m not suicidal.”
Dante crossed his arms. “Pretend I’m not here. Gwen can kick your ass all by herself.”
Gwen launched herself at him like a missile. Harry tried to swing a heavy, brawling right hook, but she slipped under it effortlessly and shoved her fist into his ribs. The impact shook Harry. She followed it with a spinning elbow to his jaw, a knee to his stomach, and a flurry of strikes that sent him skidding through the remains of the shattered glass table.
She fired a webline at the ceiling and swung, delivering a double kick at Harry’s chest. He crashed into a glass display case, shattering it, but rolled to his feet again in two seconds. Just in ti to catch her next strike on his face. He threw an uppercut at her chin with his left hand. She caught his hand just like he had.
Sohow, it turned into a contest of strength.
“Your dad,” Harry said with a grin even as blood trickled down to the floor. “I’m going to start with his legs and make him scream your na while I peel the skin from his bones.”
Gwen’s eyes flashed with rage. She clenched his hand hard and twisted it down. “Asshole.”
“Argh!” Harry scread and flung his hand. The joint from his elbow moved separately. “My arm arrrgh!!! It hurts, bitch!”
His arm had been broken in a matter of seconds. The Goblin Serum had done extraordinary things to his body, and durability was clearly the most significant of them. However, Gwen, with her Anti-Venom suit, was stronger by a mile. She was also more experienced than him.
Gwen hooked him in the face and sent him stumbling sideways into the wall. She grabbed his arm and pulled him in for a knee to his stomach, folding him in half. The finishing touch was a spinning kick that slamd him hard into the wall. The impact left a crater in the plaster. Harry slid down slowly, legs giving out beneath him. He slumped against the wall and spat out a mouthful of blood.
Even that wasn’t enough for Harry. He held his stomach and started laughing maniacally, even though it only made him cough and spit more blood.
She quietly walked toward him. “Still not regretting anything?”
Blood dripped from his mouth as he looked up at her. “Gwennie, you know where MJ is? She’s having the ti of her life right now!”
Gwen froze mid-step. The shift in her was imdiate. All of the emotions were drained out of her in a single second, replaced by terror.
“What did you do to her?”
“I knew I couldn’t defeat Skullfire head-on,” Harry wheezed, still chuckling. “I needed insurance. Dad always told the most important thing about any plan is what happens after it goes wrong. Always have a backup plan, Harry. MJ is mine.”
Gwen took a step toward him. “Where is she?”
He took off his mask, showing a blood-stained grin. “Not telling.”
She looked toward Dante with panic in her eyes. “What do I do…?”
“Can’t even save your own friend.” Harry spat blood on the floor. “Useless. I bet he saved your dad too. That’s why you spread your legs for him. So girls like flowers, but you like bodyguards.”
Gwen looked ready to explode with fury, but she held back out of fear for MJ’s safety. Harry took an obscene-level satisfaction from her helplessness.
He clicked his tongue. “I’ll do you a favor as my friend. Ask your boyfriend to heal and drop in Italy. Once I get to a safe location, I’ll tell you where MJ is.”
Dante didn’t share Gwen’s concern, nor did he possess her restraint. He crossed the room in an instant and stomped his foot down hard on Harry’s chest.
“Bastard.” Harry clenched his jaw, using everything to push back. “Move it. It hurts.”
“It won’t for long.”
Dante didn’t have to ask nicely. He channeled his Biokinesis and reached directly into Harry’s physiology. He healed the life-threatening internal bleeding and then tweaked neural control and stress responses. He effectively bypassed Harry’s psychological defenses, entirely removing the biological capability to lie or withhold any information. It was a delicate but invasive trick he wasn’t aware of until his encounter with Magneto.
“Speak,” Dante ordered coldly as he removed his foot. “Where is MJ?”
Harry laughed. Even bleeding and broken against the wall, he laughed. He may have lost the fight, but he still held a card that would keep Gwen from hurting him, the arrogance of which was written across his battered face.
“You think I’m going to just tell you?” He shook his head, grinning. “I’m not going to say I sent her to Whitney Frost in Italy—”
The grin faded, his eyes widening with horror. Dante recognized that na. She was the woman engaged to Norman Osborn.
“Why am I telling you about Whitney? Why am I telling you she’s going to send MJ to train at a brothel?”
The one word made Gwen completely lose her mind. “You bastard. She is your girlfriend of two years! How could you do this to her? You sick, disgusting piece of shit.”
Harry ignored her completely, staring up at Dante. “What did you do to ?!”
“There is no point in telling you,” Dante said, turning to Gwen. “I’m going to end him.”
To think he had believed he could fix everything by simply wiping a few mories. The Goblin Serum had twisted Harry’s mind beyond repair. Even if telepathy could wipe the mories, the nature underneath would not change. He had stopped being Harry the mont he took that serum. The cruelty he had shown today wasn’t learned. It had blood in the days he had spent grieving for Norman.
Gwen took a deep breath. “I’ll do it.”
“Gwen, no!” Harry scread at Gwen to stop. “Aren’t we friends? How can you abandon MJ? Don’t you care what happens to her?”
Dante watched in surprise as Gwen reached a hand toward Harry. The symbiote matter shot from her palm and enveloped his face like another mask. Harry struggled to rip it off his face. The symbiote matter had blocked every air passage, slowly suffocating him.
Gwen squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t watch, which arguably made it worse, because she was forced to listen for the muffled, agonizing sounds of Harry Osborn slowly choking.
Harry stopped struggling and slowly reached into the pocket of his robe. Beep. The sound was almost inaudible beneath the labored sounds of Harry’s failing breath, but Dante heard it.
‘A signal to kill MJ—never mind.’
A low hum ca from outside, rising in pitch as the device accelerated.
Monts later, the goblin glider shattered through the window. Its thrusters scread as it headed toward, aid to impale Gwen’s exposed back with the sharp wing. Gwen’s Spidey-sense responded before she did, making her step sideways.
“Kugh!”
The glider streaked past Gwen and drove itself into Harry’s chest. Harry, who was already on the verge of death from suffocation, gasped like a dying animal. His trembling hand reached out, grasping at empty air—a final attempt to hold onto sothing, to take sothing with him to Hell. The light in his eyes dimd and went out.
The hand fell to his side.
Gwen stood frozen in the settling dust, staring down at the corpse of Harry Osborn. The symbiote slowly peeled back from her face, retracting into her suit to reveal her pale, shell-shocked expression. Losing a long-ti friend was a tragedy she could have mourned. But consciously crossing the line and suffocating him to death was traumatizing on an entirely different level.
Dante gently wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders. “He wasn’t your Harry anymore. The real Harry died with Norman.”
She turned into his arms without a word. The Anti-Venom suit peeled from her like a curtain, leaving her crying in his embrace. It wasn’t long before she was bawling her eyes out with heavy, breathless sobs that shook her entire fra. The grief was tearing her apart.
“I should’ve… I should’ve checked up on him. It’s all my fault.”
He held her tight, resting his chin on her head as he looked down at the blood pooling around the glider. He had wanted her to be less naive and a little more prepared for the world as it was rather than the world as she wished it to be. To make her decisive when circumstances called.
It was way harder than he had thought.
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