A few words to my reviewers:

To Agent Silver: lol means "laughing out loud," right? And yes, history always repeats itself unless people learn from it.

To moonjava: Thank you.

I can't believe that everyone seemed to miss Ben Parker's encounter with President Bush in the last chapter. And the cameo of Jayson Blair in Chapter 5. I thought that was a pretty funny bit.

Now, for the story! In the last chapter, Noreen Osborn decides to follow her grandfather's and father's footsteps as the newest Green Goblin. Now, in this chapter, she pursues her obsession with Austin, who is putting his tentacles to good use (not that, any of you dirty minds that may be out there)

Chapter 7: Laufey

4:50 pm, ESU, Curt Connors Dormitory, Black Friday (also known as The Day After Thanksgiving)

Austin sat alone in his dormitory. He couldn't afford to fly all the way to California.

He was finishing his dinner—a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes—and talking on his cell phone.

"Hey, Aunt Laufey! Where's Mom?"

"The crooks aren't taking the holiday off. How's college?"

"Great. My science professor swears up and down he's going to see me accepting the Nobel Biology Prize. Hey, did you know Nobel is the guy who invented dynamite? But he didn't just want to be known for making things that blew up people, so he made up the Nobel Prizes instead."

"Ha! And the rest? Are you still reading Shakespeare?"

"Sure. I've got those annotated texts of Hamlet and The Tempest you sent me and they'll sure help me on the exam."

While he was talking on the cell phone, Austin's tentacles were busy scanning textbooks. One was writing notes in a notebook. Writer's cramp was the worst—that was why he had taught his tentacles to write. They had grasped the basic idea as he clasped the pincers around a pen and guided them across the paper—the hard part was teaching them to write in penmanship he could read. At first, their writing looked like chicken scratch. Finally, the tentacles were now writing in a half-decent print. Austin closed his eyes as the actuators filed away information inside his head. It was like Austin's mind had become the hard drive of a computer, storing all his class notes as his arms scanned them in. Later, at exam time, he would mentally open the files—acing his tests every time. Heh, if his professors only knew his little secret.

Austin briefly wondered whether this qualified as cheating. Oh well, he was probably putting the arms to better use than his father was—which he interpreted as robbing banks and beating up his girlfriend's father on top of speeding trains. The only thing was that the actuators couldn't type. Then they could write his papers.

"Glad to help my favorite nephew," laughed Laufey.

"Laufey—I'm your only nephew."

"Yeah, right. So have you got a special girl in your life? Magni volunteered to send care packages to the troops in Iraq for a project for UC Irvine. She sent off a whole big stack of Spider-man comic books and all the junk food she could find and shipped it all off. She received a long thank-you letter from a Marine named Ben Parker, and now he wants to meet her when his tour of duty ends…"

(small world, isn't it?)

Austin launched into a coughing fit, after swallowing his Coke the wrong way.

"What, you need the Heimlich maneuver? Not much I can do from 3000 miles away…"

"Nah, I don't need the Heimlich. As a matter of fact, I'm dating a girl named May."

"That's a relief. I heard once that you were dating Spider-man's daughter. What I read in the Old Testament is wrong. God apparently does have a sense of humor…"

This was going into very dangerous territory, and Laufey tended to treat almost everything as a joke. Austin decided to cut the conversation off.

"Look, Laufey, I really need to study."

"For God's sake, Austin, the finals aren't until nearly Christmas, and are you talking on the phone with your mouth full?"

"Happy Thanksgiving, Laufey," he said, and hung up.

There was a sudden knock outside his door. Austin hid his tentacles back under his coat.

"Back so soon, May?" he asked.

It was another girl, strange but oddly familiar. "Close, but no cigar," she said as she broke the door open.

Austin stared at the girl standing inside the now-smashed door. His unexpected visitor was a girl with a killer figure, and she probably would have been very pretty if she weren't wearing a horrid green and purple suit and a goblin mask.

We must stop her before she kills you, Brother! We know she is intending to do so.

No. Let me try and reason with her.

All we've been doing is helping you study. We just sit there and read, read, read. Then you make us write notes for you. Can't we have any fun?

I know from example what you tentacles consider fun. Stay inside unless I tell you to come out.

Austin tried to humor his way out of the situation. "Um, Halloween was like, a month ago."

"Very funny, aren't you?" asked the girl.

"Wait a minute…who are you?"

"The Green Goblin, that's all you need to know. You must come with me."

"Hey, I'm studying. I really haven't got time for a fruit in a bad Halloween costume." Austin tried to sound braver than he really felt.

"Well, then I'll just have to take you by force," Green Goblin replied, shrugging. She ran at Austin, taking a swing. Austin ducked, and her fist made an oversized hole in the wall. Oh, crap, I bet this would have never happened if I'd gone to UC Irvine with Magni...

We're your only chance. She is strong, and she will kill you if she is able to punch you.

Wrap around me as a shield, then. Don't hurt her.

They obeyed, unwillingly.

Don't you humans say the best defense is a good offense?

This isn't a football game.

Two tentacles wrapped around their "brother"; the other two carried him out of the way of Green Goblin's punches. Austin didn't care that she knew his secret. With an outfit like that no one would believe her if she told anyone.

Green Goblin punched yet again, and Austin sprang out of the way with his arms. There was yet another giant hole in the wall where her fists struck.

God, he didn't know a girl could be that damned strong.

Finally Green Goblin's fist met its target. 160 pounds of boy and 66 pounds of machine went flying into the wall, making an even bigger hole. She had hit him right in the head, and made several dents in his tentacles besides. He was out cold.

"Funny, I would have expected more of a fight out of you," she remarked. She carried him to the purple glider hovering outside the broken dorm window, and was off.

May Parker was walking alone down the street. Some jerk was playing their stereo too loud next to their apartment window. The song was from Green Day, her favorite band.

"I walk a lonely road,

The only road that I have ever known

Don't know where it goes,

But it's home to me

And I walk alone."

--"Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

Being a superhero was so lonely. Why hadn't she listened to her father when he tried to tell her about great power and great responsibility? She thought he was just being dumb. She already might have placed Austin in grave danger just by telling her who her father was. And if he knew what she did for an extracurricular activity, well she could just get him killed.

"I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line of the edge
And where I walk alone"

--"Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

Austin was so strong, but so helpless. He had never learned to use his tentacles like his father did—apparently his paranoia about the supervillian lurking inside of himself was so great he probably wouldn't even use them to defend himself.

"My only love sprung from my only hate!

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

Prodigious birth of love it is to me,

That I must love a loathed enemy."

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Her father was convinced they could never be because he was enemies with Austin's father. It was straight out of Romeo and Juliet, a superhero's daughter falling in love with a supervillian's son.

(Well, you know how that play ended, don't you?)

Couldn't Austin choose a different path than his father had? Could the apple fall far from the tree? Austin's father had told her father that intelligence is a gift, a privilege, to be used for the good of mankind.

(That was before he went nuts, wasn't it?)

May knew she had reached a crossroads—she could break up with him, and keep him out of danger, or stay with him, no matter what the cost. But the cost was too great for her to bear. Power and responsibility, blah, blah, blah. Her father was so full of wise quotations and so empty of real answers.

May was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she never heard the scream—and the mad cackle that followed it.