The coffee shop on 42nd Street had become Harry's refuge from the suffocating atmosphere of Oscorp Tower. Three days after dismantling the board, he'd grown tired of the congratulatory emails, the nervous glances from remaining executives, and the weight of being treated like some kind of corporate savior. The little place tucked between a dry cleaner and a cell phone repair shop served decent espresso and asked no questions about why a billionaire CEO preferred their cramped tables to his corner office.
Harry was halfway through his second cup when the first explosion shattered the morning calm.
The blast came from somewhere north, close enough to rattle the shop's windows and send pedestrians scrambling for cover. Car alarms screamed across the street as people pressed themselves against storefronts, heads turned skyward toward whatever was causing the chaos.
Then Harry saw them.
Three sleek, gunmetal-gray shapes descended between the skyscrapers like mechanical vultures, their movements too precise to be piloted by humans. Hammer drones. He recognized the design from news footage of the Stark Expo disaster, but these looked different. Upgraded. More aggressive.
One of the drones hovered thirty feet above the intersection of 42nd and Broadway, its weapons systems tracking civilians who scattered like startled pigeons. The targeting laser painted red dots across a woman pushing a stroller, an elderly man trying to help his wife to safety, a group of tourists frozen in terror.
Harry watched through the coffee shop window as the drone's repulsors charged with a high-pitched whine that cut through the sirens and screaming. In seconds, those people would be vaporized, turned into collateral damage in whatever sick game someone was playing with military hardware in the middle of Manhattan.
That's when she appeared.
Black Widow dropped from the sky like a falling angel of death, her red hair streaming behind her as she struck the drone with enough force to crumple its armored chassis. She rolled with the impact, using the machine's momentum to spin herself into a perfect landing while the drone crashed into the asphalt in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.
But she wasn't done.
The second drone had locked onto her the moment she appeared, its twin machine guns spinning up to full speed. Natasha Romanoff didn't run or take cover. She moved like violence was a dance she'd been practicing her whole life, every step flowing into the next with lethal grace. A throwing knife appeared in her hand from nowhere, hurled with surgical precision into the drone's optical array. Blinded, the machine sprayed bullets wildly across the intersection while Natasha closed the distance.
Harry found himself pressed against the coffee shop window, watching with the intensity of someone studying a master class in applied lethality. This wasn't the sanitized heroism he'd seen in news footage. This was brutal, efficient, and absolutely mesmerizing.
Natasha reached the second drone as it tried to recalibrate its targeting systems. Her hands moved faster than Harry could follow, fingers finding pressure points in the machine's armor that shouldn't have existed. Somehow, she made a pile of metal and circuitry convulse like a living thing before tearing its central processing unit free with her bare hands.
Two drones down in under sixty seconds.
The third drone, apparently possessing more intelligence than its predecessors, abandoned its attack run and dove straight for the coffee shop where Harry sat. Its targeting system locked onto him through the window, repulsors charging for a kill shot at point-blank range.
Time slowed to a crawl. Harry saw his reflection in the drone's optical sensors, saw the energy building in its weapons, saw his own death approaching with mechanical certainty. His body tensed to run, but there was nowhere to go. The shop was too small, the drone too close, the charge sequence too far advanced.
Then Black Widow was there, moving faster than physics should have allowed. She grabbed Harry's collar and yanked him sideways just as the repulsor blast vaporized the chair where he'd been sitting. They hit the floor hard, Natasha's body shielding him from the shower of glass and debris.
Three gunshots rang out in rapid succession. When Harry looked up, the third drone was falling from the sky like a broken bird, its central core smoking from where Natasha's bullets had found their mark.
"You okay?" she asked, helping him to his feet with the same casual efficiency she'd used to dismantle three military-grade killing machines.
"Yeah. Yeah, I think so." Harry brushed glass fragments from his jacket, his hands shaking from adrenaline. "Thank you. You saved my life."
"Part of the job." Natasha studied his face with those unsettling green eyes, the kind that seemed to catalog every micro-expression and file them away for future reference. "You're Harry Osborn."
It wasn't a question. Harry nodded, wondering if she was going to arrest him, interrogate him, or just shoot him on general principles. Being the son of a recently deceased supervillain complicated most social interactions.
"I'm sorry about your father," she said, and somehow made it sound genuine despite everything Norman had done.
"I'm not."
That got her attention. One perfectly sculpted eyebrow arched slightly, the only indication that he'd surprised her.
"Interesting. Most people would at least pretend to grieve."
"Most people's fathers weren't mass murderers."
Natasha smiled, and it actually reached her eyes. "Fair point. So what are you planning to do about it?"
"About what?"
"About the fact that your father's criminal network is still active. About the board members who enabled him."
Harry stared at her. "How do you know about any of that?"
"I know a lot of things, Mr. Osborn. It's my job."
Before Harry could answer, the distinctive whine of repulsors filled the air as Iron Man landed on the street outside, his red and gold armor gleaming in the afternoon sun. Tony Stark's amplified voice cut through the noise of sirens and shouting civilians.
"All clear here, Natasha. Last drone is down."
"Copy that. I've got a civilian who might be useful."
The faceplate retracted with a soft hiss, revealing Tony Stark's famous smirk. But his eyes were serious as they focused on Harry through the shattered coffee shop window.
"Harry Osborn. The kid who's been making waves in the corporate world. Canceling weapons contracts, pissing off shareholders, generally behaving like someone with a functioning conscience." Stark stepped through the destroyed storefront, his boots crunching on broken glass. "I like it."
"Mr. Stark." Harry stepped forward, extending his hand. "I've been hoping to meet you."
"Have you now?" Stark's handshake was firm, his gaze penetrating. "Let me guess. You want to partner with Stark Industries, pool our resources, make the world a better place through the power of capitalism and good intentions."
"Actually, I was hoping you could give me some advice."
That wiped the smirk off Stark's face. "Advice? That's a new one. Most people want money or technology or a photo op. What kind of advice?"
Harry gestured at the destruction around them, at the smoking remains of the drones, at the civilians slowly emerging from cover. "How do you do it? How do you take something that was designed to kill people and turn it into something that saves them?"
Stark's expression grew serious. "You mean the armor?"
"I mean everything. Your father made weapons. You made weapons. But then you became something different. How?"
"You asking as someone who's trying to make the same transition?"
Harry nodded.
Stark was quiet for a long moment, studying Harry's face with the intensity of someone who'd learned not to trust easy answers. Around them, emergency responders arrived to deal with the aftermath of the attack, but neither man seemed to notice.
"It starts with admitting that you were wrong," Stark said finally. "That the thing you thought was making you strong was actually making you weak. That helping people is harder than hurting them, but it's the only thing that matters in the end."
"And then?"
"Then you get to work. You use every advantage you have, every resource at your disposal, every lesson you learned from doing things the wrong way, and you dedicate all of it to being better than you were." The arc reactor in Stark's chest pulsed with soft blue light. "It's not easy, kid. Some days you'll wonder if you're making any difference at all. But if you're serious about this, if you really want to change things, then you need to stop thinking like a businessman and start thinking like someone who gives a damn about the people he serves."
"I don't know how to be that person."
"None of us did when we started. That's what makes it interesting." Stark's repulsors fired briefly as he prepared to take off. "But Harry? If you're really serious about redemption, remember this: the armor doesn't make me Iron Man. The willingness to sacrifice everything I was to become what the world needed does. Most people can't handle that kind of death and rebirth."
As Iron Man rose into the sky, Natasha lingered for a moment, her green eyes studying Harry with renewed interest.
"You know what I saw when you were watching me fight those drones?" she asked.
"What?"
"Most people thank their rescuer or ask if everyone's okay. You were analyzing my technique, cataloging my methods, studying how I moved." Her smile was sharp enough to cut glass. "That's either very smart or very dangerous."
"Maybe both."
"Maybe." She turned to leave, then paused. "Word of advice, Mr. Osborn? Whatever you're planning to become, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. The world has enough monsters wearing hero masks."
After she left, Harry stood alone in the ruins of the coffee shop, surrounded by the evidence of what real heroism looked like. Not inspiration or good intentions, but deadly competence applied with surgical precision to protect people who couldn't protect themselves.
He thought about what Stark had said about sacrifice and transformation, about the willingness to die as one thing to be reborn as another. About Natasha's effortless violence in service of innocent lives.
.....
...
..
Three hours later, Harry found himself in Oscorp's bio-research division on the thirty-fourth floor, a place he'd rarely visited during his father's lifetime. The labs here felt different from the weapons facilities he'd been dismantling. Cleaner. More focused on healing than harming.
Dr. Curtis Connors looked up from a microscope as Harry entered, surprise evident on his weathered features. The man was in his fifties, with graying hair and the slightly distracted air of someone whose mind operated on multiple levels simultaneously. His missing right arm, lost in a military accident years ago, made him one of Oscorp's most motivated researchers in the field of regenerative medicine.
"Mr. Osborn. I wasn't expecting to see you down here."
"I'm exploring parts of the company I never paid attention to before. Your work on limb regeneration is fascinating."
"Thank you, though I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to continue it." Connors gestured toward his lab with his remaining hand. "Budget cuts. Your father was never particularly interested in medical research unless it had military applications."
"What if that changed? What if medical research became a priority instead of an afterthought?"
Connors paused, studying Harry's face with new interest. "That would be... revolutionary. But it would also require a fundamental shift in Oscorp's corporate philosophy. Your father built this company around the idea that strength comes from the ability to dominate others. Medical research is about healing, about making people whole. It's a completely different worldview."
"Maybe it's time for a new worldview."
They spent the next two hours touring facilities Harry had never known existed. Laboratories working on genetic modification, cybernetic integration, performance optimization technologies that could enhance human capabilities beyond normal limits. Research that had been perverted by Norman's military focus but could be revolutionary if properly directed.
"Your father saw the human body as a weapon to be enhanced," Connors explained as they examined prototype genetic therapies. "I see it as a miracle to be restored. Same technology, completely different applications."
Harry found himself cataloguing everything with the same intensity he'd brought to studying Natasha's combat techniques. Not inspired by the nobility of medical research, but fascinated by its potential applications. What Connors saw as healing technology, Harry saw as enhancement possibilities. What the doctor viewed as restoration, Harry recognized as transformation potential.
"Dr. Connors," Harry said as their tour concluded, "hypothetically speaking, if someone wanted to enhance human capabilities for protective rather than destructive purposes, what would be possible with our current technology?"
"Hypothetically?" Connors smiled. "Enhanced strength, speed, reflexes, sensory acuity, healing rates, resistance to toxins and diseases. Cybernetic integration could provide advanced processing capabilities, heads-up displays, integrated communication systems. Genetic modifications could optimize physical performance while maintaining human physiology."
"And the risks?"
"Psychological instability, cellular breakdown, immune system rejection, addiction to enhancement drugs, loss of humanity through technological integration." Connors's expression grew serious. "Enhancement technology is like any other tool, Mr. Osborn. It amplifies what's already there. Enhance a good person, you might create a protector. Enhance someone corrupt..."
"You create a monster."
"Exactly."
As Harry left the bio-research division, his mind raced with possibilities. Stark had told him that protecting people required capabilities most humans didn't possess. Natasha had demonstrated that heroism meant deadly competence applied with surgical precision. Connors had shown him that the technology to bridge that gap already existed within Oscorp's walls.
The pieces were coming together in Harry's mind like a complex equation solving itself. Protection required predation. To defend innocent people from monsters, someone needed to become something capable of hunting those monsters with equal or superior violence.
Someone willing to sacrifice everything they were to become what the world needed.
Someone who understood that good intentions without deadly capabilities equaled dead idealists.
The elevator carried him back to the executive floors, but Harry's thoughts remained in those research labs, cataloguing enhancement possibilities and tactical applications. By the time he reached his office, he'd made a decision that would change everything.
He was going to become something his father had never been. Something the world needed.
Something that could make Norman's weapons obsolete by being more dangerous than anything the old man had ever imagined.
Harry Osborn was going to become the weapon that hunted other weapons.
And unlike his father, he was going to use that power to protect the innocent instead of preying on them.
The transformation had already begun.