On to the reviewers! (where is everyone?)
To daveykins, Moonjava, and Llarian: Yes, I am a bit proud of that trick...You've got to admit that Rachelle has a lot of guts, taking on a villain as powerful as that with no superpowers herself!
Ahem, on to the story! And whether old or new, read or review!
Chapter 11: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
"Rob the bank!" yelped Alexei. "What for?"
"Because, fool, it will serve two vital purposes," snapped Noreen. "First, we'll get the money we need for our plans; and second, Spider-girl will most likely show up, and we'll get the chance to—" Noreen wickedly grinned. "—practice our powers on her."
Noreen held up a piece of paper. "These are our plans."
It was Saturday. There were no classes, and Austin was sitting with May in her dorm room. May was fiddling with a police scanner.
"You've been playing with that thing a lot since last Tuesday," Austin remarked.
"Well, how else am I going to know where Spider-girl and Scarlet Spider are needed?"
May paused. "There's a bank robbery downtown Manhattan."
"I'll grab my tights," said Austin as May took her civilian clothes off to reveal her Spider-girl tights.
"You're not coming," May said. "You're staying here."
Austin cocked his head. May was avoiding his eyes.
She's hiding something from you, Brother.
Maybe for good reason.
I'm telling you, that girl of yours—
She's a bad influence.
"May—what are you hiding from me?"
"Nothing, Austin," May said.
"What are you hiding?"
"Fine. Rachelle came to me last night."
Rachelle had indeed told May about her encounter in the dorm room. Rachelle knew from Austin who May was. However, Rachelle was good at keeping secrets—wild horses couldn't drag her knowledge out of her. That was why Austin had told Rachelle in the first place.
"So, Mister Sandman stretched out his arm and knocked me flat—and then I saw this big vacuum cleaner next to the refrigerator—and I'm praying to God, Yahweh, Allah, and all the gods I can think of—and then I get this idea. I mean, he's a big pile of sand, what if I suck him up with the vacuum? So I grab the vacuum and he's about to strike the fatal blow when…"
"You turn the vacuum on and suck him all up?" May had asked.
"Right, how'd you guess. So anyway, I run out of Austin's dorm, but then I stop outside the doorway to see if there are any more nutters coming in there. And I'm right, 'cause then this thing popped right out of the electrical outlet or something."
"This thing, what did it look like?"
"Well, actually, it was a girl—I think. She had green and yellow tights on, and she was like, I don't know, glowing white hot, and crackling with electrical energy, I could feel it in the air. She came over to the vacuum, and dumped it on the floor. And then the pile of sand became a guy again, and they talked awhile, and then they left."
"Did you hear what they were talking about?"
Rachelle had shrugged. "Not much, but I think I caught the girl saying that Noreen would get really pissed off if they were late and the guy was complaining that Noreen wouldn't date him anyway."
"Noreen? That's the one they were talking about?"
"Yeah, I think the name was Noreen."
"I talked with Rachelle. Your cousin. Seems that she went into your dorm to get something, and a supervillian attacked her."
"Girl Goblin?" Austin croaked.
"No, but Rachelle told me that Noreen could be behind it."
"She's probably after me again."
"Yes, that's what I thought too. It took both me and your father to subdue her that time—"
"What? My father?"
"He's the one who told me that Noreen kidnapped you. He insisted on coming with me to rescue you. I think he does care about you, underneath all the tough talk and ten—"
"Do you understand? I never even knew who he was until I was fourteen, for God's sake…"
Austin turned around. His girlfriend was gone.
At First Central Bank in Manhattan, Sally Forth was snapping at a woman who had overdrawn her account. She was sipping a café latte, and inwardly wishing she could get a raise. She would never admit that she felt her boss was sexist, but she sure felt it anyway.
The lights of First Central Bank flickered until they went off entirely. "What the hell?" muttered Sally. Power outage?
"Hey what the hell is going on here?" yelped the boss. "Harrison…go check the fuse box and then call the power company for God's sake…"
Harrison, the boss's general flunky, slinked to the fuse box. He stopped dead. Standing in front of the fuse box was a redhead woman, wearing green and yellow tights and a mask that looked like lightning bolts firing off her face. The air was practically crackling with energy, and electric sparks were firing off the redhead's fingertips at random.
"Looking for something?" the girl asked.
Harrison's face went pale. He whipped out his cell phone, frantically dialing 911. However, Miranda's electrical energy had short-circuited the phone.
Sally Forth blinked up at the very odd set of characters assembled before her. There was a guy in leather pants and a lion skin (head and claws still on!) tied over his shoulders; a guy that looked like a big pile of sand someone attempted to sculpt into a human being; a brown-haired girl in an armored bird suit; and the electric redhead in the green and yellow. However, another one stepped forward to face her.
This figure was clad in a green and purple suit and an ugly goblin mask, but the long auburn hair and faint hint of bosom under the purple shirt betrayed the figure as female. She was holding several orange balls.
"Don't worry about them," Goblin hissed. "They're just spear carriers in my powwow. Now, I'm just going to ask you to make a very large withdrawal, and here's what you're going to do…"
"Oh holy shit!" Flint yelled. "Spider-girl!"
"Hunter and Nightingale, you grab the money! Sparkler, Sandman and I will hold the bug off!" shouted Noreen.
Meanwhile, the police scanner is still on. Rachelle, who had now entered the dorm, was trying to pull Austin away from the door, mostly unsuccessfully.
"No! Austin, are you crazy! I told you that Noreen was after you again and May has a good reason for not letting you go and neither one of us want you hurt and what the hell!"
A pincer had grabbed the collar of Rachelle's shirt, and as gently as he could, Austin used the tentacle to fling his cousin across the room.
"Do you think I'm going to cower in the dorm room while the girl I love gets hurt?" Austin shouted.
"Course not," Rachelle muttered. She rubbed her head where it had been slammed on the wall. "But I don't think May wants the boy she loves to get hurt either."
An onslaught of pumpkin bombs whizzed over May's head. "Come on, let's not play dodge ball, Noreen," she said. May covered the bombs in so much web that they bounced off the ground, quite harmlessly. However, this wasn't the only thing May had to deal with. An electric shock from Miranda knocked Spider-girl flat, and Noreen ordered Sandman to turn into a sandstorm and suffocate her.
Sandman hesitated for one tiny second. What was going on in his mind? But May did not care at that point. She used that second to turn a fire extinguisher on Miranda while webbing up Noreen with the other hand.
"Do you think your silly little strings can hold the Girl Goblin for long?" Noreen laughed. With one thrust of her arms, she broke completely free of the webbing, ripping it to shreds with her bare hands. She hopped up on her purple glider and yelled at her…spear-carriers. "We've got the money, fools. Let's head out before the heat catches us."
May reached up and retrieved the digital camera webbed to the ceiling.
May stood in front of Mr. Jameson's desk at the Daily Bugle headquarters. However, the person sitting at that desk was not the publisher, but a frowning brunette girl slightly above her age.
"Where's Mr. Jameson?" May asked.
"I'm serving in his capacity," the girl rudely snapped. "I'm Janice Jean Jameson, his daughter. Where's the pictures?"
May showed Janice pictures of Spider-girl fighting the five supervillians.
"These are the shittiest photographs I've ever seen. I mean it. It's the crappiest crap in crap town."
"Fine," May said sweetly. "I'm sure the New York Times would like to see these."
"Hey! Write out a check to May Parker for three hundred!" Janice shouted out the room.
"I'm sure the Times would pay twice that…"
"Make that check for five hundred! And no more!" To May, she added, "Seriously, I can see the headline now: "The Sinister Seven: Spider-girl and Five Fellow Criminals Rob First Central Bank!"
"Spider-girl and Scarlet Spider are not 'sinister'—" May began.
"They are so!" Janice shouted. "Besides, I need a good alliterative name. How else are those New York sheeple supposed to remember it? That's such a good name. I need to copyright it. I'll get a dollar every time someone scribbles it on a piece of paper."
Janice then pulled May close to her by the shirt collar. In a conspiratorial tone, she said, "I'll give you another four hundred if you get me my own personal picture of that new menace, Scarlet Spider. Have you seen him, the one with the red costume and sunglasses? He's frickin' hot. Dad gives me all kinds of hell and says I'm freaky for loving a guy with metal tentacles, but off the record, I'd say that getting my hands on that eight-armed hunk would be more than worth having Doctor Octopus for a father in law. Don't tell me, I'll tell you." Janice looked around wildly. Her voice dipping even lower, she added, "Another two hundred on top of that if you get him in his boxers—or less, get my drift?"
May's cheeks were beginning to match the red of her spider-suit. She grabbed at her pocket. "Uh…my cell phone's vibrating and it's a really important call and I really got to go." She raced off into the other room.
Poor girl, Janice thought. She probably has a crush on Scarlet too and she's just too afraid to admit it. She slurped her cappuccino. "I love the smell of sales in the morning! Dad, I'll make you proud yet!"
