To Crys Skywalker: You feel bad for ole Flinty? Why?

Ahem, on to the story! Let's see, you know Doc Ock's son Austin from "The Octopus' Spawn," Spider-man's daughter May and Green Goblin's daughter Noreen from "My Only Love and My Only Hate," and I've introduced you to Electro's daughter Miranda and Sandman's son Flint Jr. already...how about the daughter of the high-flying, villainous Vulture? Let's read on, and review! Presenting...

Chapter 7: The Vulture and the Nightingale

Philomela was, according to Greek mythology, a princess who was turned into a nightingale by the gods.

Philomela Toomes wasn't a princess, but she was treated like one by her father, Adrian, as she was the child of his age. And, as Adrian always told her, she could sing like a nightingale. She thought he was a respectable man, an esteemed businessman. At least that was what he'd always told her.

But her father was dead.

And it was all her fault.

Philomela had come home from school early one day in her senior year of high school. On her way home, she picked up a copy of the Daily Bugle. She shuffled to her house, amusedly reading an article about the rampage of this supervillian called the Vulture, an old man who wore a bird suit with actual wings. She walked into the front door, paper in hand.

The first thing she saw was her beloved father climbing through the window—in a green bird suit.

"Daddy—what are you doing?" she had asked. "Are you—are you—this Vulture man?" She held up the paper.

"Why of course not, honey," he said. The lie had failed miserably. The father and daughter promptly began arguing. The fight ended when Philomela ran away from the house.

By the end of the evening, Philomela began to feel remorseful for treating her father like she did, and she decided to turn around for home and apologize as soon as she got there.

But she never did. When she returned to her house, she saw a SWAT team perched outside her house, and emergency medical personnel carrying a covered, dead body out of the house.

"Where's Daddy?" she'd frantically asked a police officer. "Please, where's my dad?"

The officer had told her that while she was out, her father, as the Vulture, had robbed a bank, killed a teller, hid his suit, and hotfooted it to his house. He'd engaged in a five-hour standoff with the police, who fatally shot him as soon as they saw him through the doorway. It was a mistake, they told her, and the officer who shot your father will be suspended with full pay pending a full investigation.

And then she'd found the Vulture suit hanging in the closet—green, with a white fluff around the neck and huge wings from the arms. A note fell from it that said, "This is all I have of value; I will give it to you, my daughter."

Philomela had kept it all these years, not even knowing how to use it or how it worked. All she knew that it was the only memory of her father she had. She now kept it in her dormitory closet, hiding it, trying to fit in as a pre-medical major at Empire State University.

At the insistent knocking at the door, Philomela got up and opened the door to find a tall woman in a bad Halloween costume and wavy auburn hair.

"Come with me and bring the bird suit—you know what I'm talking about," she simply said.