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"What exactly is this thing? Why can it suppress my abilities?"
Karn, wreathed in the crackling purple plasma of Peter's reverse transmutation array, finally felt the cold sting of reality. Unlike the standard plasma he had shrugged off before, this specific frequency was tearing through his life-energy reserves with surgical precision.
For the second time in his millennia-long hunt, the predator felt the suffocating grip of fear. The first time had been during the Great Hunt for the Master Weaver. Driven by a survival instinct he hadn't used in ages, Karn made a choice he once considered beneath him: disarrayed flight.
Gathering every ounce of his remaining life energy, Karn wove a dense white mist around his form to buffer the purple lightning. He forced the energy into his fingertips, extending ten serrated energy claws. With a desperate, agonizing heave, he tore a jagged gap through the plasma field. The cost was high—the violent energy collision vaporized his fingers, leaving him with two raw, empty palms. He didn't wait for them to heal; he lunged through the gap, barely escaping the scorched zone of the lawn.
The Aerial Intervention
On the manor grounds, Gwen, Tobey, and Harry watched the shimmering purple orb expectantly. They had seen the weapon work wonders, but as Karn scrambled out of the energy trap, Harry's expression darkened into a cold, vengeful smile.
"Not this time," Harry hissed.
He signaled his overhead Green Goblin Drones. They swooped in, releasing a localized carpet-bomb of plasma Pumpkin Bombs designed to finish what the trap started. The air was filled with the whistle of falling ordnance.
But just as the bombs reached the terminal point of their arc, a dense, mechanical buzzing sound cut through the rain. In a blur of motion, every single Pumpkin Bomb was detonated prematurely in mid-air, lighting up the sky in a harmless, distant display of purple fire.
"How is that possible?" Harry roared, his eyes searching the dark clouds.
A figure emerged from the rain, hovering on a high-speed Green Goblin Glider. He wore the dark green metallic armor and the snarling, full-face helmet of the Original Green Goblin.
"Father...!!!"
Harry's voice was a hoarse rasp. Seeing Norman Osborn alive and standing against him proved every one of Harry's fears: his father didn't see him as a son, but as a failed experiment.
"Useless!" Norman's voice boomed through the manor's speakers, cold and malicious. "I have no son who stands with the very vermin that killed his own father!"
The Swarm of Energy
Taking advantage of the distraction, Karn didn't let his pride interfere with his escape. He activated the ultimate defensive maneuver of his race. His physical form began to dissolve, his life energy shattering into tens of thousands of individual, white-light energy bats.
The swarm erupted into the sky, weaving through the rain and the debris of the explosions. Gwen and Tobey lunged forward, trying to web the bats or strike them down, but the sheer volume was overwhelming. As long as a single bat escaped, Karn could reform.
Within seconds, the majority of the swarm vanished into the horizon. Norman Osborn, satisfied with the chaos he had sown, cast one final look of contempt at Harry and Tobey before banking his glider and disappearing into the night.
Peter's Assessment
The rain continued to fall over the ruined lawn. Harry sat on his glider, trembling with a mix of fury and heartbreak. Gwen looked down at her hands, the guilt clear in her eyes.
"Harry, don't be impulsive!"
Peter flew out from the laboratory, his Nanometer Metal Battle Suit shimmering as he touched down.
"I'm sorry, Peter," Gwen said quietly. "I didn't complete the task."
Peter shook his head. "Don't blame yourself. You did better than I expected. When Karn shifted into his energy form, he became immune to standard physical interaction. I didn't fully anticipate he would have a 'bat swarm' escape route of that magnitude."
"But," Peter added, his metallic eyes glowing with a renewed intensity, "it doesn't matter. All the information I needed—the frequency of his energy shift, the signature of his bat-form, and the interference pattern of Norman's tech—has been gathered. Next time, there will be no gap to tear. He won't be able to escape."
The confidence in Peter's voice was grounding. It was the voice of a man who had already won the war in his head; the world just hadn't caught up yet.
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