Tobey made his move.
The taxi driver only heard the faint whoosh of wind rushing through the back seat. When he turned around to ask for the destination, he discovered his passenger had completely vanished, leaving the back door swinging wide open.
The driver froze, assuming he had just fallen victim to some stupid YouTube prank. He slammed his hand against the steering wheel and cursed loudly.
"Motherfucker! Don't hail a cab if you aren't gonna ride, you piece of shit! If I ever see your face again, I'll blow your fucking head off!"
After all, this was the Land of the Free. Aside from the daily threat of random shootouts, you never truly knew what kind of absolute lunatics you might encounter on the streets of New York.
Shaking his head, the driver reached back, slammed the door shut, and hit the gas, speeding away without a second thought.
What the driver didn't know was that in a dark, secluded alleyway just a few blocks back, a black shadow dropped silently from the sky, landing heavily in the deepest corner of the shadows.
It was Tobey, clad in his pitch-black tactical suit. And dangling from his massive grip was the Oscorp executive whose head the cab driver had just threatened to blow off.
Currently, the executive was being held entirely suspended in the air, Tobey's vice-like fingers clamped brutally around his jaw. Aside from muffled, terrified whimpers, the man couldn't even scream for help!
Tobey had absolutely zero interest in villainous monologues or interrogations. Tightening his grip on the man's skull, he violently slammed the executive's head into the solid brick wall beside them!
SPLAT.
With a sickening crunch that sounded exactly like a watermelon exploding on pavement, the executive's skull was instantly obliterated against the masonry.
Tobey casually shook the gore off his hand. Utilizing the materials at hand, he wiped his gloves clean on the dead man's expensive tailored suit. Once satisfied, he reached down and picked up the silver briefcase containing the regeneration serum.
Was casually executing an unarmed corporate secretary too cruel?
Tobey would simply laugh. Are you kidding me?
Leaving aside the fact that Tobey fundamentally didn't care about the concept of innocence, this man was Norman Osborn's personal executive assistant. That title alone guaranteed he wasn't innocent in the slightest.
When an avalanche falls, no single snowflake is ever innocent.
And this particular snowflake happened to be sitting right at the very center of the avalanche.
God only knew how much blood and black money this man had managed for Osborn over the years. No matter how brutally he died, he deserved it.
After eliminating the executive, Tobey popped the latches on the silver briefcase and extracted the vials of lizard regeneration serum.
He carefully wrapped the fragile vials in a thick layer of organic webbing to protect them, then casually tossed the empty briefcase into a nearby dumpster.
Rule Number One of hijacking high-tech corporate assets: Never bring the fucking briefcase home.
God only knew if Oscorp had embedded a micro-GPS tracker in the lining.
This was a lesson Tobey had learned the hard way during his early days as an assassin. He had successfully hit a target for Kingpin and decided to take the target's briefcase full of cash.
Because his Spider-Sense hadn't triggered—meaning there was no immediate physical danger—he had assumed the case was clean.
He had completely forgotten that the Spider-Sense only warned him of physical threats, not covert surveillance. The target had slipped a burner phone with active GPS into the cash stacks.
Since that day, Tobey never kept the container. He only ever took what was inside.
From intercepting the cab, executing the secretary, extracting the serum, and abandoning the case, Tobey's entire operation took less than sixty seconds.
By the time he vanished into the night sky, Peter and the Lizard were still violently clashing on the Williamsburg Bridge.
However, their brutal hand-to-hand combat had evolved into a deadly game of fetch.
The Lizard was furiously hurling cars off the edge of the bridge, and Peter was desperately firing webs to catch them before they smashed into the river below.
Honestly, the sight of Peter frantically catching cars was strangely wholesome and visually spectacular.
Well... as long as you ignored the terrified, ear-piercing screams of the civilians trapped inside those cars.
Watching from afar, Tobey shook his head.
As expected, even though their physical stats were relatively similar, their operational philosophies were worlds apart. They were absolute polar opposites.
Peter's highest priority was saving lives. Tobey's highest priority was eliminating the target.
If Tobey had been tasked with killing the Lizard, he wouldn't have spared a single glance at the civilians plummeting toward the river. He would have used the distraction to instantly execute the monster.
Hell, if Tobey didn't actively rip a car out of traffic to use as a bludgeoning weapon against the Lizard, it meant he was having a particularly merciful day.
Seeing that Peter was entirely occupied with his rescue operations, Tobey felt absolutely zero inclination to swing in and help.
His primary objective was securing the regeneration serum in his subterranean lab.
So, after a brief, passing glance at the chaos on the bridge, Tobey turned and vanished into the city skyline without a second thought.
An hour later, after securely locking the volatile serum inside a stasis vault, Tobey casually strolled into the living room to finish watching the news with Ben and May.
The television was currently broadcasting a dramatic recap of the "Dinosaur Man" fighting the "Spandex Vigilante."
When Ben and May asked where Peter was, Tobey smoothly lied without missing a beat.
He told them he had successfully comforted a heartbroken Peter, and that Peter had finally gathered his courage, sneaked out of his bedroom window, and gone to his 'ex-girlfriend's' house to aggressively win her back.
Ben and May bought the lie completely hook, line, and sinker.
Ben chuckled, noting that a real man had to have a thick skin when it came to romance. He proudly claimed that was exactly how he had managed to win May's heart back in the day.
He did, however, complain that Peter was old enough to just walk out the front door and ask for the keys to the new Ford Raptor. With the sheer masculine energy of the Raptor backing him up, Peter's success rate would have doubled!
Tobey immediately countered that the Audi R8 was a far superior wingman.
Unlike the aggressive, hyper-masculine Raptor, the sleek, aerodynamic curves of a sports coupe were statistically far more appealing to the average college girl.
May surprisingly agreed with Tobey's assessment of the cars.
However, she immediately scolded both of them for giving Peter terrible, superficial advice.
She reminded them that teenage romance was supposed to be the purest form of love. It shouldn't be corrupted by shallow, materialistic things like who drove the more expensive car.
If the girl truly loved Peter, she would happily date him even if he picked her up on a rusty skateboard.
But if she didn't love him, and only agreed to date him because he showed up in a luxury sports car, then she only loved the car, not Peter.
May used her own history as an example, reminding them that when she had nearly gone down the wrong path in her youth, it was Ben's pure, inherent goodness that had brought her back—not his rusted-out junker of a car.
Both Ben and Tobey nodded solemnly, putting on extremely serious faces as if absorbing May's profound wisdom.
In reality, the lecture was going in one ear and directly out the other.
It wasn't that they disagreed with her logic.
It was just that they had heard this exact story roughly three thousand times over the last decade, and their ears had physically developed calluses to it.
May, of course, instantly saw through their fake, synchronized nodding. Knowing it was useless to argue with the Parker men, she simply reached out, pinched both of their ears simultaneously, and turned her attention back to the news.
A moment later, she casually pointed at the screen.
"Hey, do you guys notice anything? That masked hero saving people on the bridge... doesn't his build look exactly like our Peter's?"
Hearing this, Tobey froze completely.
Was it really that obvious?
He knew that in several comic continuities and the MCU films, Aunt May eventually discovered Peter's secret identity.
But he never expected the Aunt May of this universe to instinctively identify Spider-Man as her nephew the very first time she saw blurry footage of him on the news!
Forget his and Peter's precognitive danger sense. This was the true Spider-Sense!