The Daily Bugle's newsroom was a riot of righteous fury and red ink. J. Jonah Jameson's face dominated the broadcast—livid, veins pulsing, voice tearing through the airwaves like artillery fire.
"I'm telling you, folks! These organizations are worse than any costumed villain we face!" Jameson's voice boomed across every screen in the city.
"The purple man's recent testimony and gruesome death said it all. Oscorp is far worse than anything we've ever suspected!" he barked, slamming a fist on his desk for emphasis.
"We have obtained verified proof—anonymous at first, but verifiable—that Oscorp has been running illegal human experiments, creating bio-weapons under the guise of prosthetics and medical research, and dumping toxic waste through shell companies to poison entire boroughs. They engineered monstrosities—Scorpion among them—and left a trail of dead and broken people to cover their tracks. Wall Street manipulation, intimidation, stolen patents—all of it."
It wasn't just the Bugle. Every news outlet, every social media feed, was instantly saturated with the truth. The entire, meticulously cataloged history of Oscorp's illegal activities was revealed.
By noon, the city had become a pressure cooker. Footage, documents, sworn testimony—somehow, impossibly—everything that should have been destroyed in locked vaults was back online and circulating. No one understood the source of the leak, but the evidence was undeniable, and the public was boiling with incandescent fury.
Protesters filled the streets outside Oscorp, placards bobbing, chants building into a single, angry tide. Government investigators arrived with warrants in hand; forensic teams combed through labs; every server mirrored and logged under official eyes.
Norman Osborn watched the collapse from the observation suite above his top-secret labs, the hiss of the building's air vents the only soundtrack to his unraveling, having already reeling from the broadcast, had desperately tried to delete files and destroy every last piece of incriminating data.
He had burned files. He had pulled servers offline. He had crushed personnel who asked too many questions.
But when the authorities arrived, every document, every email, every financial ledger reappeared, magically intact, as if time itself had reversed.
It was enough to make Norman question his sanity, his life choices, and the very fabric of reality.
'Who did this to me?' Norman thought, pacing with a predator's jitter. 'Who's taken everything?'
They hauled him away in cuffs that looked as ridiculous on his thin wrists as any crown would have.
Now, hours later, the verdict was delivered. Stripped of his empire, his reputation, and his freedom, Osborn sat alone, locked away in a high-security prison room, his face twisted into a mask of pure, impotent fury. He could not, would not, accept the humiliation.
He didn't understand. How could this happen? Who was powerful enough to target him and dismantle his entire life in a single, brutal day? He rose and began pacing slowly around the cell, his mind racing to find the identity of his executioner.
Suddenly, a distinct crunch broke the sterile silence.
Norman immediately spun around, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
A blonde man sat in the single steel chair—relaxed, casual—chewing on a carrot as if he were in a country kitchen and not in the ruin of a corporate empire.
He is lazily eating a carrot with a look of utterly bored, deadpan amusement. It was non other than Ethan Carter.
Perched comfortably on Ethan's lap, her arms draped possessively around his neck, was Anna Marie, smiling with a dangerous sweetness.
"What's up, Doc?" he asked lazily, attempting a familiar cartoon bunny impersonation, though his expression remained a perfect study in unbothered arrogance.
Norman recognized him at once. He didn't need any further confirmation. The casual audacity, the impossible security breach, the flawless execution of his ruin—it could only be the work of the man who looked like he was waiting for a train.
"It was you," Norman snarled, his voice raw. He surged forward, demanding answers. "Why?! We had nothing against each other! Why did you do this? To my people? To my company?"
Ethan chewed with deadpan. "Look at the audacity of this bitch," he said lightly, and gave Anna a small, teasing tug that made her hiss a soft, delighted sound. He didn't rise; he only nodded toward her. "Go on, Rogue. Educate our guest."
Anna slid from his lap and stood, the expression on her face shifting from amused to cold business in a heartbeat. She stepped toward Norman with the calm of someone about to deliver a merciless lecture.
"You want to know your mistake, Norman?" Anna began, her voice ringing with authority. "Your biggest mistake was plotting against Aeon Biotech to steal the Immune+ Protocol."
Norman opened his mouth to protest, but Anna's voice, now sharp as a whip, cracked through the air.
"Silence!"
The single word held such absolute command that Norman snapped his mouth shut, a flicker of genuine fear crossing his eyes.
"You didn't have to go this way," she said. Her voice was even, but underneath it was steel. "We know your condition now, Osborn. We could have helped. All you had to do was ask for help. A simple request, and Aeon would have considered it. You could have come to us instead of plotting to steal the Immune+ protocol. You chose this." She tapped the side of her cheek as if the next point annoyed her on a personal level. "You turned people into experiments. You gambled with lives for profit. That's not science. That's cruelty."
"I don't need help from others!" Norman shot back, the fight returning. He puffed out his chest, though his voice was strained. "I have the capability! I have the capacity! If I just had the full formula for that protocol, I would have cured myself!"
Anna merely stared, her expression a mix of pity and disbelief. The man still hadn't grasped the situation.
Ethan, meanwhile, silently munched on his carrot, maintaining his deadpan gaze, his utter lack of engagement only serving to infuriate Norman further.
Norman tried to fight back—defiance, always. "I don't need your pity. I have resources. I—" His words were a scattershot of bravado.
Anna cut him off, the authority in her voice immediate. "You don't understand. We didn't expose Oscorp just for revenge. We seized what mattered—your data, the server nodes, the evidence. We handed it to the outlets, and the truth is out. The world will remember what you did, Mr. Osborn."
Ethan watched, chewing his carrot in slow, exaggerated bites, eyes hard and amused at once. "You could've made a network of ghosts and secrets," he said, "but we decided the world should know."
"This doesn't break Oscorp!" Norman vowed, shaking his fist. "We will rise again! And I swear, I will make sure you both pay for this!"
"Oh, Norman," Anna said, wiping a tear from her eye. "That's adorable." She stepped closer. "Everything that was Oscorp has already been bought by us. The moment your truth came out, we already held Oscorp in the palm of our hands. We can make your entire company disappear from the face of the Earth with a snap of our fingers."
Norman's face drained of color as Anna moved closer, producing a slim tablet and flipping it toward him.
On the screen scrolled the files—transaction logs, hidden lab inventories, field notes, damning memos. The digital weight of it left no room for denial.
"Don't bother hoping for a takeover," Anna explained, her smile bright and terrifying. "We made sure everyone who mattered—every major investor, every key board member—chose to stand with the winners instead of the loser. From tomorrow, Oscorp will be no more. But don't worry," she added, her smile widening. "Ethan already has your research, and he'll take good care of your former employees."
She smiled, not kindly. "You could have asked to bargain. Instead, you tried to take what wasn't yours."
Norman lunged, impulsive and desperate, but Anna was anything but a helpless girl. Before Norman could even lay a finger on her, she moved with lightning speed, driving a vicious, perfectly aimed kick straight into his groin. The crunch was sickening, a sound of ruin and finality.
"Woo, that looked like it hurt," Ethan observed casually, still munching.
He crumpled, the fight leaving him in a single breath. She hauled him up by the collar until his face was level with hers, and for a terrifying second the cold, brilliant clarity in her eyes felt like a verdict. "The moment you thought of harming my Ethan," she said quietly, "you signed your death warrant. I will make sure the world remembers you as the disgrace of humanity. Everything you built will be destroyed by me and my sisters."
The crazy, beautiful look in her eyes filled Norman with a profound, debilitating terror.
She pushed him back hard enough to send him sprawling to the concrete.
Norman's last coherent thought as everything dimmed was that he had underestimated them—underestimated how many people were watching, how quickly alliances could form, how utterly the tide could turn.
Ethan slowly rose from the chair and wrapped his arms around Anna from behind, pulling her close. "You looked so hot just then, my little Rogue," he whispered in her ear.
Anna leaned back into his embrace, her fierce grin softening slightly. "Good. Because I'm just getting started."
They laughed together then—an odd, bright sound in a vault that had been built for secrecy.
A crimson portal spiraled open behind them—sleek, perfectly formed—and they stepped through hand in hand, the space folding back on itself the moment they passed into it.
The room smelled faintly of ozone and carrot peels. When the prison guards staggered in minutes later, the only sign that anything had happened was Norman, unconscious and humiliated, and the smear mark where he'd fallen.
Outside, the city was still roaring. The protests had not calmed; the courts were already lining up paperwork. Oscorp's chapter had been halted, but the repercussions were unspooling.
For Norman Osborn, the day had ended with a televised massacre of his reputation and a personal defeat far worse than any experimental failure: exposure, shame, and the knowledge that his old certainty—control—had been taken from him.
.....
Later that night, the city lights of New York cast a cold, indifferent glow through the massive panoramic windows of the Fisk Industries chairman's room.
Wilson Fisk sat in his leather chair and stared at a tablet displaying the dizzying, immediate implosion of Norman Osborn and Oscorp.
The whole operation—a complex corporate behemoth reduced to rubble and criminal scandal—had taken less than twenty-four hours.
Fisk reached for the wine glass on his desk, its crystal weight familiar and comforting in his colossal hand. "Care for a drink?" he asked, his voice low and rumbling, not bothering to lift his head.
A soft, amused chuckle answered him from the edge of the room.
Fisk slowly raised his head and turned, his eyes narrowing slightly as he took in the sight. Anna Marie—better known as Rogue—was seated on his plush, custom-made sofa, looking entirely too comfortable.
"Didn't expect the big man himself to have such refined taste," she said, eyeing the glass.
Fisk slowly began to move, his expensive suit barely rippling. "I thought Ethan Carter himself would come for me," he stated, a subtle threat laced into his composure. "Since he sent his little girlfriend, I must assume he didn't consider me a serious issue."
Anna shook her head, a playful, yet utterly confident, smile touching her lips. "Exactly. You're not even an issue, Mr. Fisk."
She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, ready to engage the Kingpin in a conversation that was less a discussion and more an execution.
"I mean, look at you," she started, her voice radiating the sharp wit Ethan had clearly encouraged. "You're a human mountain who hides behind lawsuits and expensive suits. You call yourself the Kingpin, but you let a nervous, screeching man in a corporate office steal my fiance's tech, and then you stand here acting like the smartest man in the room after watching him get vaporized. Please. Even a low-level thug has better self-awareness."
Fisk's jaw clenched, the veins in his neck bulging. It took every ounce of his massive self-control not to reach across the room and crush the insolent woman who was roasting him with such casual cruelty.
"Let me make this clear, Mr. Kingpin," she continued, voice dripping with mock respect. "You're not even on the list of problems right now. You're just… background noise. A leftover stain we'll clean up later."
Fisk's jaw flexed, the muscle in his temple twitching. He set the glass down carefully, his patience thinning. "You have a sharp tongue for someone sitting alone in my office."
Anna shrugged lightly. "Maybe. Or maybe you're too used to people being afraid of you."
The tension thickened; for a moment, it seemed like the room itself held its breath.
Finally, he regained control, his voice calm but strained. "Enough. How does Carter plan to deal with me? Because I know he is coming."
Anna arched a brow. "How'd you figure that?"
"It didn't take a genius, Ms. Marie," Fisk retorted. "Mine and Norman's old enemies lack the power to dismantle Oscorp in a single day. The only new and powerful enemy we've acquired recently is the one I planned to steal from alongside Osborn—Aeon Biotech. Norman was reckless, but he wasn't alone. You've made your message clear. Carter's next move… is me."
Anna gave a slow nod. "True. You are at least correct that you are not a genius."
She continued, the amusement draining away to be replaced by cold seriousness. "Ethan wasn't going to deal with you immediately. He said you helped him out with some pocket change a few years back, and he's weirdly sentimental about that sort of thing. But I, personally, am not."
She rose from the sofa, her hands dropping to her sides. "So, I took the liberty of giving you your gift early."
Without another word, without a wind-up, and without even a change in her stance, Anna launched a blow of impossible speed and strength. She didn't strike with her fist, but drove the heel of her palm hard into the very center of Fisk's enormous chest.
The sheer, concentrated force of the blow was cataclysmic. A dull, sickening thump echoed in the vast room, followed by the terrifying sound of shattering bone.
The Kingpin's vast body lifted off the ground and flew backward across the room, smashing through the wall into the adjacent executive lounge.
Anna calmly turned away from the gaping hole she'd created. "That's from me. A parting gift."
A crimson red portal instantly shimmered open behind her, and she stepped through it, vanishing without a trace.
Meanwhile, Fisk lay broken in the opulent wreckage of the adjacent room. He was in horrific condition.
From that single, deceptively soft strike, most of the bones in his upper body were fractured—cracked ribs, likely a shattered sternum, perhaps even damage to his spine. Worse, his formidable will prevented him from losing consciousness.
He knew his body. He knew physical power. That little girl was impossibly strong, far stronger than any human should be.
"She... hit like a goddamn truck," he rasped, coughing.
Just then, the outer door to his primary office burst open. Hammerhead and Fisk's personal secretary rushed in, having heard the earth-shattering thump.
They gasped, seeing the gaping hole in the wall and the Kingpin lying broken amidst the debris on the other side.
"Mr. Fisk! Are you alright?" the secretary cried before rushing toward the hole.
Hammerhead cursed under his breath. "Boss, what the hell happened in here?!"
"Just... a visitor," Fisk muttered, forcing himself upright with help. The pain was almost unbearable, but his glare remained ice cold.
They managed to slowly, painstakingly, move the broken mountain of a man back to the sofa.
The secretary fumbled with her phone. "I'm calling an ambulance—"
"Do it," Fisk growled while clutching his ribs. "And close off this floor. Now."
The secretary immediately called for an ambulance, rushing out of the room to coordinate the discreet arrival of emergency medical personnel.
Hammerhead lingered, his metal skull twitching nervously. "Boss... I didn't know if I should tell you this in this situation..."
Fisk winced, a grunt of pure agony escaping him. "What happened?" he rasped, every breath a stab of fire.
"It's the money, boss," Hammerhead whispered, his voice laced with dread. "All our money's gone."
Fisk's eyes, already wide with pain, widened further in shock. "…What?"
"Every offshore account, every hidden stash, every backup fund. All drained—simultaneously—an hour ago. All of it. Every last dime, from every single location we hid it in. It's gone."
Hammerhead continued, distraught. "We crossed-checked everything... And found nothing. No digital trail, no forced entry, nothing. It seems... the Ghost came back. He's started his hunting again."
Then Fisk's eyes widened—not in anger, but in recognition.
He stared at the ceiling, ignoring the searing pain. The timing. The impossibility. The absolute vanishing act of his illicit, untraceable fortune. It all clicked into place, the truth a final, crushing weight.
He knew now. He knew who it was that had bled him dry years ago, who had always been a ghost in his system, an impossibility he'd dismissed as a phantom.
A wave of blackness finally claimed him. Wilson Fisk lost consciousness, his last coherent thought a name.
'Ethan Carter.'