Post by Rift on Oct 14, 2023 13:55:14 GMT -7
The Hobgoblin brought his glider around the edge of an old, long abandoned school, hovering over part of the caved in roof as he looked around. Sure it was not the old warehouse at the docks gimmick that he and so many other unsavory folks so frequently used as meeting places or bases of operation, but like Roderick Kingsley himself, perhaps it was another aspect of villainy that required reinvention. In fact the entire theme of the day, or since his return to the United States honestly, was focus on reinvention. Cleaning up the brand that was being a goblin. After all with Norman having hung up the green and purple for a suit and tie in Washington that left him with little in the way of competition.
That punk Phil Urich is still out there and who knows how many other Skittle colored wannabes, but this town is gonna learn what a real Goblin is capable of. Cleaning up the brand is gonna be messy, but nothing worthwhile ever came easy, he thought.
The school itself was almost a metaphor for his own intentions. Once a shining example of academic excellency it, like much of the neighborhood had fallen on hard times, a victim of the crime surge of the 70s and 80s that eventually led to students moving away to safer locations. Thus it had sat for years, a monument to what was, sullied by vandalism and neglect. The overgrown parking lot had weeds as high as his hip as nature fought to retake the area, windows were smashed and boarded up, and graffiti marred almost any surface worth painting on. The chain-link fence that was intended to keep trespassers out had long ago been cut open to allow access.
Hopefully large enough for my guest, he thought.
His plans for reinvention and revamping the goblin brand had brought him into the Kingpin's sphere once more. While the fat man was being particularly forthcoming for once and even hinted at wanting to step away from New York to pursue other opportunities, Kingsley just didn't buy it. Nobody gave up power willingly, especially not having sacrificed so much to attain it. That meant Fisk was up to something, but for the time being he'd struck something of a truce with Hobgoblin and even funded some of his activities in exchange for a his harassing Daredevil and his fellow Defenders down in Hell's Kitchen. One of those activities he helped fund, whether he knew it or not, was recruitment. Unlike Norman though, an army of Goblin knockoffs was not worthy of standing besides Roderick Kingsley, of being associated with the Hobgoblin name. Plus it would be difficult to make a goblin army profitable.
Thus he had put in some calls and contacted an old acquaintance and fellow despiser of the wallcrawler, the living wrecking ball that was The Rhino. He had a job offer for him, and potentially others, that he knew would be right up the big man's alley.
