Off to the reviewers!
To moonjava: Thank you.
To Agent Silver: I'll try to keep going as long as you try to keep reviewing. And I just read the second part of the ottophile jokes...you've been hitting the Dr. Pepper bottles again, haven't you?
To LadyKayoss: If your "How Do I Love Thee?" and "Moonlight Becomes You" give any indication, I think Otto's life is pretty whacked up, too. But I guess it just runs in the family, doesn't it? If you've ever read the Archie comics, you also might want to check out my crossover "Just a Second Chance."
On to the next thrilling chapter! Need I tell you to read and review?
Chapter 7: Compunctious Visitings of Nature
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it!
Macbeth
"Why? Why have his child? It is exhausting, being a single mother."
"As it was exhausting, being a single father to your father. And I told you the reasons why you had to have Smith's child. Do you need to be reminded?"
Noreen gave no answer. Her grandfather, in the mirror, took this silence as a yes.
"Number one: to have an heir to the Goblin's legacy.
"Number two: the heir had to be extraordinarily intelligent as well as physically powerful. Hence, Smith as the father.
Number three: Smith is married to May Parker, Spider-man's daughter. What do you think will happen when dear May—who could only bear her husband daughters—finds that her dear Austin has fathered a child—a son—with her worst enemy?"
"She will be heartbroken."
"Right. And in her grief it will be all too easy for us to destroy her."
Noreen stared into the mirror, into eyes as blue and cold and inhuman as her own. "Yes. We certainly will."
She walked out of her private office, passing the large cherry wood bookshelf. She paused as she saw two books laying flat on the shelf, apart from the rest.
Shakespeare's plays Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, together in that flat stack of two. Noreen had read them both. How ironic.
Austin and May were Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers with parents embroiled in a deadly enmity. But Austin and Noreen would be Macbeth and the Lady Macbeth, the ambitious, proud, powerful couple ready to do murder—and more—to fulfill their destiny to take over the king's throne and rule their known world, till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.
And besides, Macbeth was Noreen's favorite play by far.
"If there's anything you need to tell me, you'd better tell me now."
May's words stung Austin. What had he done now? Or worse yet, what had those monstrous snakes done?
"Parker Marie is in her room bawling her eyes out. She says that her boyfriend, Harry Octavian, broke up with her. Furthermore, she claims that the reason is because he told her that he is her half-brother."
Austin let out a long string of curses. "Parker's been kissing and who-knows-what with her half-brother!"
"Harry Octavian Osborn. The last heir of the Osborn clan. Need I say who's the second-last?"
Austin simply could not answer. May took this silence as a no.
"Guess the Girl Goblin got her wish after all, didn't she? We swore to love, honor and cherish each other until death do us part. To forsake all others, as long as we both shall live. I kept my end of the bargain, even though I thought I would crack after…"
(after our son Austin Benjamin was born dead)
"And all this time I thought my father was wrong about you. Was it a drunken one-night stand, Austin? Like your father and mother conceived you?"
"Now that's going too far!" Austin finally shouted. May could see him sweating…he was probably using every ounce of restraint to keep those tentacles of his from choking the life out of her right then and there. Austin finally retreated to the Secret Laboratory.
Of course, he never did that with Noreen. But God knows he wanted to. On the college steps, he almost accepted her offer of a date. In the Osborn mansion, he almost accepted her offer to become the sixth member of the New Sinister Six, just because of his desire for a woman as astonishingly powerful as she was heart-stoppingly beautiful. Who could tell what would have happened if he had?
May was the only woman Austin had ever truly loved. But she was not the only one he wanted...