MV2 Presents:
By: Tom Lynch
***
One of those days. Wake up late because your mom’s yelling outside the
door; stick your head further under the covers. Half an hour later you finally
decide it’s time to stick your head out from under the covers. And then you
notice the time.
Crap.
Out of the bed and down the stairs like an express train. Breakfast
down your throat and back up, shrug out of nightclothes and into school gear –
no time to pick out what looks good, just grab and chuck on – and into the
bathroom. Brief brisk scrub at your teeth, hair forced hastily into place, and
a splash of water. No time for anything more. Back into the bedroom and throw
the window wide open, out via the tree and that gives you just enough leverage
to carry you over the fence – Mom hates this, but you’ve been doing it since
you were twelve and for some reason she accepts you don’t have a problem with
the acrobatics, even though she hates it – and land at the bus stop thirty
seconds before it halts beside you.
And the Mad Dash gold medal, yet again, falls to good ol’ May Parker,
Mayday to friends and basically anyone who isn’t busy spending their school
years as a living stereotype. No admittance to jocks, geeks, or Joe and Joanne
Average; but if you’re more than a cardboard cutout who eats occasionally,
she’ll probably like you.
***
The bell shrilled the end of school, and Mayday slumped. “Thank God
that’s over,” she muttered. Things hadn’t improved even after she’d settled
down from the initial adrenaline rush. Nothing special, just your average
school day. But hey; we all know what they’re like… Especially if you weren’t
ready. And May wasn’t.
But, like she said, it was over. All that was left of the day was the
leisurely walk home with Bobbi and Steph, and the already-agreed few hours of
just sitting in May’s room relaxing and talking about whatever the hell the
three of them damn well felt like talking about. Life, suddenly, was good
again.
Only it wasn’t.
Walking out of school, the three of them got a whole fifteen paces down
the road before the manhole cover Mayday was stepping on smashed up into the
air, turning over. This wasn’t the kind of set piece, practised over-the-fence
move May was used to, either. Taking her completely by surprise, it catapulted
her into the air – and what had forced the cover up kept right on rising. Four
gleaming metallic arms, each tipped with a small manipulative claw. Two
fastened on the cover, two wrapped themselves with sickening mechanical
precision around May – and yanked her rapidly back down through the manhole.
With that, the remaining tentacles slammed the cover back down – and then the
street was silent again, in less than thirty seconds.
Bobbi picked herself slowly off the tarmac. Steph just stared at the
manhole. “Oh, man… This is not good. We gotta tell her dad… And what’s he gonna
be able to do about it?”
Silence fell, drifting out for long minutes. “What happened to
Spider-Man, anyway…? That was Ock, wasn’t it?”
***
Peter Parker stared blankly at the two girls. All emotion seemed to
have drained from his face with the blood. Mary Jane squeezed his hand gently.
She knew exactly what was going through his head.
Silence reigned. The two girls shifted uncomfortably, wishing they
could offer sympathy in some meaningful way, wishing they had some guilt they
could confess to, absolve themselves of; but it wasn’t happening.
As far as they could tell, Doctor Octopus or someone very like him had
just snatched Mayday at random. Why, if one of them had been the girl in the
middle, the girl who stepped on the manhole cover… It could have been them.
That, at least, was what they thought, and the Parkers weren’t going to
enlighten them. Eventually Mary Jane stirred, breaking the silence. Smiling
weakly at the two girls, she just said “Thank you for telling us, girls. We’ll
call in the police, and…” Her voice trailed off. “And I guess we’ll just have
to hope May comes out of this safely.”
Mutely, the two girls nodded and left, eyes downcast.
Mary Jane closed the door after them and turned back to Peter, whose
eyes hadn’t actually shifted from the settee the two girls had been sitting on.
From long experience, she said nothing, just watching and waiting.
Peter had learned, when not much older than May, that with great power
came great responsibility, and he had learned this immediately after an
accident had given him that same great power. But responsibility is a blade,
and it cuts both ways. If he hadn’t been called out by his responsibility to
keep New York safe from people like Otto Octavius, the man who’d kidnapped May,
and the Osborn clan and… all the thousands of others over the years…
If he hadn’t been Spider-Man, in brief, Octavius would never have
kidnapped May. And that made this his responsibility. A great responsibility,
but Peter no longer bore the great power needed to face up to such
responsibility. Cancer incubated by the spider’s bite that had given him his
powers – and the radioactivity within – had required treatment; and for some
as-yet unexplained reason, that treatment or the cancer itself had ultimately
negated his powers. Spider-Man had retired from the community of heroes – as,
it would seem, had Peter Parker, scant years after finally revealing his secret
to other heroes like the Human Torch and Daredevil.
And, of course, this was the second time in May’s short life that being
a Parker had caused supervillains to kidnap her. She had been too young to know
the first time -–when the Parkers had spent long months believing their
hoped-for child to have miscarried – but this time, it would surely leave a
deep scar on her psyche. If, of course, she survived at all.
Eventually, Peter stirred. “I have to do something about this,” he
said. Standing, he walked across to the bookshelf, and reached up to the
highest shelf, his hand closing around an imposing hardback edition of Betty
Banner’s autobiography.
A hand on his arm gave him pause, the volume half out of its shelf.
“You made a promise,” Mary Jane reminded him, her voice close to
cracking. “You promised you’d never use them for personal reasons.” She
swallowed. “After all that’s happened to them – I know this is nothing we ever
expected, but can you really risk the consequences? You said it yourself, they
aren’t ready to do without an advisor yet.”
Peter locked melancholy eyes with her. He knew, really, that she was
right. His daughter’s freedom was a massive matter. But the damage he could
leave the world unprotected against if he used this power…
Responsibility can cut both ways, drawing blood from two new wounds at
once. He slid the book back into its place on the shelf.
***
Mayday sat in a chair, somewhere in a sewer that damn well didn’t look
like the kind of sewer you saw cops investigating in movies. No water, no smell,
no dank, dripping brickwork encrusted with moss and lichen – bright lights and
a full technical lab, in fact. Her eyes drank in the sight; a genuine
supervillain hideout. Somehow it looked less… real… than any of the ones in the
movies or SCN.
And, of course, to complete the effect, a genuine supervillain. Now
this really did feel more genuine than any movie. This was Doctor Octopus; and
even if he’d been quiet over the past couple of years, footage of him stalking
down the street twenty feet up on two of his artificial arms while the other
two attempted to pummel some hero into nothing but a messy stain often filled
the screen during retrospectives. Now, of course, that mop of Beatles hair was
heavily streaked with white, almost to the exclusion of any other colour, and
the organic body sporting the metal appendages didn’t move quite as spryly as
it once had. Which was probably one of the reasons she was strapped to the
chair.
“Why the hell are you doing this?” Mayday hissed.
“Because I needed bait,” the Doctor snapped. “Now be silent.”
“No,” May said, stubbornly. “Not until you tell me why you snatched
me.”
“Your name is Parker,” he said. “May Parker, in fact.”
“Yeah,” Mayday said. “Nothing special about my name.”
Doctor Octopus stared at her for a long moment. “You don’t know?”
“Apparently not,” May snapped. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Two metallic arms smashed into the floor, lifting Ock into the air and
swinging him in a massive arc toward the teenager. “Your father,” he said, his
voice low, face close enough to hers for her to smell strangely decaying breath
“was Spider-Man.”
Mayday blinked. “No, he wasn’t,” she said. “Don’t talk crap.”
“I KNOW!” the doctor screamed. “I found out countless times. I DIED
BECAUSE OF YOUR FATHER!”
Another flex of the metallic arms returned Octopus to where he had
previously been standing. “But it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe
me,” he said. “Your father will know I have you by now. If nothing else could
persuade him to take up the costume again, this will. Then he will come against
me, and he will die. I can settle for nothing less.”
Mayday snorted.
“Oh, by all means disbelieve me,” Doctor Octopus said, smiling. “You’re
nothing. It’s your father who matters.”
Rage began to boil up within Mayday.
And… deep inside… something in her genetics felt the adrenaline rise to
unprecedented levels.
And tipped over.
***
USER ID: PARKERWEBS
PASSWORD: ***** ***
REQUEST: SEARCH
CATEGORY: LAST KNOWN HEADQUARTERS
SUBJECT: OCTOPUS, OTTO OCTAVIUS
SEARCHING…
SEARCH COMPLETE. ONE RESULT FOUND. DISPLAY?
***
Peter Parker smiled. Even if he wasn’t going to use them, he could damn
well use their resources. Octopus was not going to have Mayday. No matter what.
He got up and abruptly left the house.
***
The sound of the car engine switching on woke MJ from her restless
attempts at sleep. Blearily, she stumbled out of bed toward the window, knowing
what she was going to see but having to confirm it all the same.
She reached the window just as Peter pulled out of the drive.
“Damn,” she muttered. “I’m not losing both of you…”
***
In the empty Parker household, the telephone rang. And rang on… and on…
Eventually the ring tailed off, to return fifteen minutes later. When
it met with no answer yet again, it ceased and did not return.
The caller, a tall woman with yellow snake’s eyes, replaced her handset
in its cradle. “Odd,” she murmured softly, turning to face her colleagues. “He
didn’t tell us he was going to be out. He’s always very careful about making
sure we know.”
A man whose skin was green and who bore leathery wings of jade on his
back frowned. “So what are we gonna do? We don’t know how to deal with this…”
“We’ll just have to try.”
***
Mayday felt… different. There was some kinda itch in the back of her
head… like something had been waiting to wake up in there and just had. Wasn’t
doing anything, though, other than making her feel like her body wasn’t hers
anymore.
And it’s not like that was anything strange; she was fifteen, for
crying out loud! Right in the middle of it!
But they didn’t mention this in the talks. What was it?
Doctor Octopus was fiddling with something or other. Pretty small
gizmo; she couldn’t quite see it from where she was strapped.
And then he stabbed it into his gut, just below where all the tentacles
stuck out, doubling over and crying out sharply.
Mayday flinched. “Uh… what the hell was that?” she asked, cautiously.
The Doctor turned toward her slowly, removing it from his stomach.
“What was that?” he asked softly. “WHAT WAS THAT?” he yelled, once more smashing
his tentacles into the ground to bear him over to the young girl.
“THIS!” he roared, waving a syringe in her face. “I am DYING, woman!
All this is just to keep me alive until I can actually have my revenge!”
Mayday blinked. “Uh… OK,” she said. “I didn’t know….”
***
AUTHOR’S NOTES: The fun bit about this was trying to alter the origin a
little – and take a little more time over it. Rest assured that I do have
answers for all the questions raised in this issue, and those answers that are
important will be released in future issues – but feel free to write in and
give me your guesses, comments, constructive criticism, abuse, etc. I’ll be at [email protected]
***
NEXT ISSUE: It’s Peter, MJ and May versus the good Doctor…