Chapter 774: Spider-Man Intervenes

Chapter 774: Chapter 774: Spider-Man Intervenes

"Roar!"

Kitty was in no condition to relax after landing. Its rolling attack had still been clipped by the flying glider. Although its belly hadn’t been pierced, it had collided with both the Green Goblin and the glider, leaving its head spinning.

So when Spider-Man came over to check on it, the tiger simply roared at him.

The street superhero immediately took a step back, raising a hand in front of himself.

"Whoa, easy, kitty. Good kitty."

It wasn’t surprising that Spider-Man had come to check on Henry first. Even without looking in a mirror, Henry could roughly guess that a supposedly bulletproof man who had just been bombarded would look absolutely miserable—like the sort of person who surviving at all would be a miracle.

That was why Spider-Man had come over to check on him.

Besides Spider-Man, Henry could hear more police converging on the area with his super-hearing.

Someone had presumably called the police earlier. Their response time was faster than expected, and the police reaction itself was remarkably swift.

From what Henry could hear, at least four patrol cars had arrived, and they were only one step away from deploying ESU, their SWAT-like Emergency Service Unit.

But however quickly the police responded, they couldn’t beat Spider-Man, who had been listening in on the police radio channels.

So Spider-Man got there first.

He’d come running, though.

After all, within Central Park there weren’t any sufficiently tall buildings for him to attach his webs to and swing around.

Henry hadn’t had time to explain his situation to Spider-Man when he saw the Green Goblin moving and immediately issued a warning.

"Watch out! He’s coming again!"

Two more pumpkin bombs flew over as the flying glider restarted and shot toward the Green Goblin, who had broken free of Spider-Man’s webbing.

Spider-Man performed a sideways forward flip, kicking the pumpkin bombs into the air with his heels one after another.

They exploded overhead, sparing the innocent bystanders below.

The Green Goblin mounted the flying glider and charged again.

Henry more or less understood now. The Green Goblin serum had enhanced his body enough to withstand Kitty’s impact attack, allowing him to return to battle as though nothing had happened.

In other words, a tiger’s bite was effective.

A simple collision, however, barely did anything.

With Spider-Man present, there was no need for Henry or Kitty to take the lead.

Spider-Man fired two webs at the flying glider, used them to launch himself forward, and immediately engaged the Green Goblin in combat.

The two truly were comic-book archenemies who loved to hate each other. Henry didn’t even need to redirect the trouble toward Spider-Man.

But Spider-Man’s seriousness actually put Henry in a difficult position.

He wanted Norman Osborn dead.

Spider-Man, however, was a superhero who didn’t kill.

So Henry’s plan to surround and kill the Green Goblin was doomed before it even began.

If he rushed forward, his movements would be too conspicuous. Spider-Man might even turn around and stop him.

At that point, a three-way melee would be one thing.

Getting teamed up on by Spider-Man and the Green Goblin would be downright embarrassing.

That tiny moment of hesitation and thought was enough for Henry to witness something unbelievable.

Spider-Man actually stopped and started talking to the Green Goblin!

The conversation itself wasn’t the problem.

The Green Goblin sprayed some unknown gas from his wrist, and the spider didn’t even dodge.

He obediently inhaled the gas and collapsed unconscious!

Just before the police finished forming their perimeter and the Green Goblin entered the effective range of their service pistols, the Green Goblin hoisted Spider-Man over one shoulder, shot into the sky, and fled!

Henry had thought that Peter Parker, who should be around Gwen’s age and attending college, wasn’t really suited to being called "little spider" anymore.

Now, however, it seemed this rookie Spider-Man was still far too green.

He’d actually fallen for such an obvious trick.

Henry sat down on the ground with a sigh of relief.

The late-arriving police officers holstered their weapons and reported the situation over the radio.

Whether the fleeing Green Goblin and Spider-Man were partners or whether one had kidnapped the other, everyone was completely baffled.

"Henry, are you all right?"

Catherine Hepburn shouted as she slowly approached with Skye supporting her.

The Kryptonian lying on the ground merely waved his hand to indicate that he wasn’t dead.

In reality, he was thinking about how to resolve this mess.

Henry knew that he’d made an enemy here.

Waiting for the Green Goblin to find Spider-Man and then getting himself killed by Henry’s counterattack after exposing his identity was simply too slow.

Who knew which problem the Green Goblin would deal with first?

If he came after Henry first, Henry could only passively defend with his steel body. That might not be enough to stop the Green Goblin’s attacks from every conceivable angle.

Especially if the bastard didn’t care about escalating the situation and injuring innocent people.

So how was he supposed to clean this mess up while keeping himself out of it?

Norman Osborn wouldn’t be the first billionaire to die at Henry’s hands.

The old-money couple, the Ardens, who had previously transformed him into a vampire, had already been personally killed by Henry.

But those two had been idiots.

They’d thought turning themselves into vampires would make them invincible.

As a result, everyone knew that Henry Brown had killed them, but there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute him.

Vampires had virtually no legal protection.

These dark creatures didn’t operate like wealthy people, using the law to construct an impregnable fortress around themselves.

They had their own rules.

Norman Osborn was completely different.

Even if the Green Goblin’s true identity remained undisclosed, Henry couldn’t simply eliminate him without consequences.

The moment the chairman of Osborn Industries disappeared, every interested party, bank, insurance company, and even the U.S. government would become involved in the investigation and turn the entire matter inside out.

"No body" absolutely couldn’t be used as a reason to end the investigation.

There had to be a conclusion.

Even without sufficient evidence, everyone needed some kind of official result before they could act on it.

The major event involving New York’s wealthy elite the previous year was a perfect example.

The founders of Rand Enterprises and their only son had disappeared after their plane crashed in the Himalayas.

Had it not been for the major incident in September, the Rand family story might have dominated the news for an entire year, becoming one of those sensational scandals New Yorkers loved to gossip about.

In the end, Harold Meachum, Rand Enterprises’ senior partner and second-largest shareholder, joined forces with an unknown faction to freeze the Rand family’s funds and shares.

The assets weren’t handed over to some relatives who had crawled out of nowhere, nor were they nationalized by the U.S. government.

In practice, Rand Enterprises fell into the hands of Harold Meachum, who had originally been the second-largest shareholder.

As for the founder’s shares, they effectively fell into the banks’ hands and became non-voting shares.

The banks could collect the returns, while on paper the assets remained recorded under the names of the missing people.

In practice, wasn’t that money effectively available for the banks to use as they pleased?

If the September disaster hadn’t happened, the investigation would have continued indefinitely, while interested parties fought behind the scenes for the outcome most advantageous to themselves.

For the banks, for example, the ideal result would have been for the three members of the Rand family to be officially declared dead, triggering the liquidation of their estate.

Debts would be settled first.

Once all creditors had been paid, the remaining securities and real estate would enter an auction process, with the proceeds going to the Treasury.

The U.S. government would only take the cash.

It sounded as though the government had gotten a bargain.

But how much debt was there?

How would the assets be valued?

Once the assets entered the auction process, who would be allowed to participate?

What would the minimum bids be?

With all those black boxes in play, would the banks really stop before they had made a fortune?

But the September disaster in New York disrupted the plans of most people involved.

Harold Meachum, who had the most direct interest, took advantage of the chaos and managed to establish the outcome in his favor.

The same situation applied to Norman Osborn.

Even with Harry Osborn as his legal heir, Osborn Industries was on an entirely different scale from Rand Enterprises.

More people would be watching it, and those people would have considerably more influence.

If Norman Osborn simply disappeared, then once all the interested parties truly exerted themselves—not merely paying lip service to their efforts—Henry wasn’t confident he could remain completely uninvolved without leaving a single trace.

At this level of power struggle, evidence and legal battles came only at the final stage.

In the early stages, even the slightest suspicion could attract attention and trigger corresponding action.

And if a particular outcome benefited someone, the interested parties might even fabricate evidence to turn that outcome into an established "fact," permanently cementing it.

To put it more bluntly:

Once the people who had the power to make the laws started playing dirty, talking to them about the law became meaningless.

Henry had to avoid ending up in that situation.

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