Now, let's get to my reviewers:
To Agent Silver: Well, sure, but I don't think Peter can quite forgive Otto for holding his aunt hostage, crashing his date, kidnapping his girlfriend, helping his best friend kill him, and trying to blow up New York City with that miniature sun of his...
To jla2snoopy: Read this chapter to see how right you are!
On to the story! Last chapter, Peter Parker, the retired Spider-man, finds out from his former boss just who his daughter's dating! Now...he confronts May! Read and review!
Chapter 6: Peter
6:30 pm. Parker residence, Queens, NY, Thanksgiving Day.
Austin Smith had been May's steady for two months, but she still hadn't got around to telling her parents yet. She wasn't exactly sure how they'd react. Austin had told her he had absolutely no intentions of telling his father, and in fact never wished to see him again. Meanwhile, Peter never got around to telling May that he knew about her boyfriend. He wasn't exactly sure how she'd react. This mutual withholding of knowledge was beginning to make things tense.
It was dinner time, and Mary Jane was carving the turkey. One of the most notable events was Ben calling them from his Marine station in Iraq. The President himself had visited the troops carrying a turkey. Ben, always eager for food, had secretly webbed the whole thing right out of his hands, only to discover it was made of plastic. "Now I know it wasn't my spider-strength that made it feel so light!" he laughed. The second notable event was when May's spidey-sense kicked in, allowing her to dodge…a roll thrown by her baby sister Gwen.
"So, how's college?" asked Peter.
"It's fine, Daddy."
"Even with your…job?" Peter persisted. "Trust me, it was hard enough when I was going to college."
"It's fine," May insisted. "My boyfriend's helping me catch up with my schoolwork." Too late, she realized what she just said.
"Boyfriend?" asked MJ avidly. "What's he like?"
"Oh, brown hair, brown eyes, a little over six feet, biology major, usually wears a big black trench coat…"
"Anything unusual about him?" Peter asked, his face growing stern. Please tell me Jameson's making up his own news like he usually does.
"Of course not. Austin is a perfectly nice, normal boy—"
"—with a notorious supervillian for a father?"
MJ swallowed her coffee the wrong way and had a coughing fit. May dropped her glass of spiced apple cider and only by her spider-speed did she manage to avoid spilling any.
"Dad," she spat, "my boyfriend's father is not relevant."
"It is very much relevant when your boyfriend's father happens to be Doc Ock, for God's sake! I am not going to let you put yourself in danger! Your job does that for you!"
"I am not in danger, Dad, and I can defend myself if I ever got into any."
"Haven't you ever thought that Ock and his son may be using you to get to me?"
"Never! Austin told me that he disowned his father—and he hasn't seen him in four years!"
"Yes—and I have oceanfront property in Oklahoma!"
"Austin is nothing like him, okay, Dad!" May was yelling now. "You're just—judging—him because of whom his father is! Instead of looking at what's in his heart, you're looking at what's on his back!"
"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," Peter contended. "I am not letting an octopus' spawn date my daughter! He can find some other girl to help him with his budding criminal career!"
"He is not a criminal, and I am not a little girl anymore! I can date whom I want!"
With that final comment, the front door was slammed even before grace was said.
"You know she's right, Peter," Mary Jane gently rebuked. "She is old enough to pick her dates, and we both know she can defend herself."
"I just don't want her to be in danger. We've always got along, and the last time we fought like this is when she told me she was putting on my tights."
"That's what you said about me," Mary Jane reminded him. "I knew you were Spider-man all along, and I knew you loved me, but you refused to have anything to do with me because you feared I would be in danger." She reached for her husband's hand. "Think of all that time we lost together. We each have to make our own decisions."
"Both Ben and May are in danger on a daily basis. I know how that feels. I just don't want her hurt, that's all."
"I know…neither do I."
8:30 pm. The Oscorp headquarters, Manhattan, New York.
Albert poked his head in. The butler had worked for the Osborn family for decades, and he knew all too well about the Osborns' tendency to develop dangerous obsessions.
As he looked at Noreen Harriet Osborn sitting at the desk in her executive office, he knew that she was no exception.
Since her father Harry had died, Noreen had become CEO of Oscorp, the family business. With her canny business sense, she had pulled the company out of bankruptcy after several disastrously failed projects—the most notable being the super-soldier venture her grandfather Norman was involved in (it was forbidden to talk about that in the Osborn house) and the equally catastrophic nuclear fusion experiment Dr. Octavius had worked on. After word got out that Oscorp's projects had been linked to both the supervillians Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus, no one had wanted to invest in Oscorp again. At Empire State University, Noreen was majoring in business, but what was the point.
Noreen's desk was practically plastered with love poems and several drawings. In one hand, Noreen held a copy of the Daily Bugle, featuring a fuzzy black and white picture of a girl swinging on a web, carrying a boy wearing a trench coat. In the other, she held an older tabloid, the headline reading "Doc Ock's Love Child: Tentacled supervillian may have fathered son with one night stand." Albert noticed that all of these mismatched items had one thing in common; they featured a tall, brown-haired boy wearing sunglasses and a black trench coat.
"Is that your boyfriend, Noreen?" Albert asked delicately. Probably not. It's another guy Noreen's obsessing over. I had to bail her out of jail and muzzle the press after she stalked Orlando Bloom and tried to bribe him to marry her, I feel sorry for the poor elf…
"Yes," she said. "A boyfriend that was stolen from me."
"Can I get you anything?"
"Yeah, get me some whiskey."
"You're 18, Noreen. You're too young to drink."
"Would you like to keep your job, Albert?" Noreen snarled.
"Very well, Noreen, I'll get it for you right away."
Noreen carefully read the tabloid articles. She was going to have Austin Smith, she had him first. And that slut May Parker who dared call herself a friend was going to really get it.
Albert came back with a bottle of whiskey. "You know, all your father obsessed over was Spider-man."
"Shut up, Albert. Now get out of here so I can drink this and go to bed."
Noreen poured herself a shot, and drank it down in one gulp. How can something that tastes so bad make you feel so good?
On the way to bed, Noreen tripped over her cat, and crashed headlong into a mirror amidst a long string of curses.
"Dammit, cat! Albert—get this dreadful cat out of here before she kills me!" Noreen yelled. Then she looked up. The mirror had broken, revealing a walk in closet of sorts. Her father and grandfather had kept this hidden in plain sight after all these years.
"What the--!" she muttered, stepping in. She first looked at the shelves filled with tiny pumpkins, and the green and purple suit hanging on a rack. Noreen stared in distaste at the ugly green goblin mask sitting on the shelf next to the suit.
Either this is a very bad Halloween costume or Daddy was into some awfully kinky things.
Then she examined a purple metallic glider reclining on a third shelf. This was probably one of her grandfather's idiotic inventions. Rest in peace and good riddance, Grandpa Norman.
Noreen then pulled open a drawer. It was filled with flasks of green fluid. Noreen ruled out poison. Two of the flasks only had a little fluid left in them, as if someone had already drank out of them. She pulled out a flask and stared at it. The fluid seemed to sparkle with an alien life of its own. A very odd thought came to her. Can all this stuff actually help me get back Austin? A purple glider would definitely be a better ride than May's crappy Ford Taurus—if it works, that is.
Nothing to lose, she decided, and downed the stuff in one gulp. Then she collapsed.