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seriousficThis chapter took a bit more editing than I thought, so you get it a day late. We'll chalk it up to, like, leap years and daylight savings time.
Plus, I was playing a lot of the Ghostbusters video game. Fun stuff.
Harry Osborn looked at himself in the mirror and for the first time in a while was pleased with what he saw. He was, in the most important way, his father’s son. He’d stopped drinking, started paying attention, and dealt with the Spider-Man… issue in a calm, rational manner. For the first time since Mary-Jane had left him, there was a certain peace to his turbulent world.
“You're Harry Osborn, you're Harry Osborn, you're Harry Osborn...” he told his reflection, a mantra psyching himself up. He kept repeating it as he pulled the capsule from his pocket. It was two inches long and the width of a shot glass. The metal framework housed a transparent material, letting him see the potent green liquid inside. Harry pulled down his collar and held one end of the capsule to the side of his neck.
”You're Harry Osborn, you're Harry Osborn, you're Harry Osborn...”
He braced himself and pressed the other end of the capsule. With a pneumatic hiss, the liquid disappeared into his body. He shuddered in pleasure for a moment, then blinked several times.
“I'm Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn...”
***
When he walked out into the boardroom, it was as a different person. That was the easiest way to think of it. As his father said, Harry was weak. But Harold was strong. Confident. Smooth. A captain of industry.
Harold sat at the head of the table, in his father’s throne. “Shall we get started?”
Waterson was the oldest and most experienced of the board members. He spoke first. “We can't. Our newest member isn't here yet.”
”New member?”
Kingsley flashed a cocky grin to Harold as he sat down at the opposite end of the table. ”Sorry I'm late. Had a killer day at the office. So, what's the emergency?”
Harold tugged at his collar, suddenly feeling very much like Harry.
“No emergency,” Waterson said, “merely the day-to-day routines of a growing business. Although... if you'll all remember the 'Aerial Soldier' project...”
”Before my time. Could you spell it out for me?”
”Quit playing games, Kingsley,” Harry said, a bit louder than necessary. “You know exactly what we're talking about.”
”And just in case anyone doesn't...” Waterson began passing folders down the table.
“My God!” Kingsley said upon receiving his. “This is...”
”The Goblin. We know.”
”Do the police?”
Harry could see the board’s apprehension was getting out of control. He stood. He was Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn… ”Calm down. They know this company was broken into days before the original Goblin made his appearance. There is no liability here. We're not looking at another Big Tobacco settlement.”
”Well, unless we're going to claim responsibility for this new attacker, I don't see why our plausible deniability has been destroyed.” Kingsley shuffled the report. “Our contractor in the Pentagon is very impressed with what the Goblin's managed to do. Both of them have waged one-person guerilla campaigns against a vastly overwhelming force.”
Harry erased a crick from his neck. ”Let me guess. They want to know what it would cost for some of these babies to 'fall off the back of the truck' and into the hands of some freedom fighters.”
Kingsley nodded, smiling. The rest of the board mirrored him, like a family of bobbleheads.
”I think you're all forgetting one key detail. We designed this craft to do exactly what it did... kill people and wreck havoc. I vote that we bury this topic. As far as I'm concerned, the Aerial Soldier project never existed.”
***
Harry’s hands were clenched into fists, hard and tight, as he left the board room. No matter how many times he told himself he was the Harry Osborn, he never quite believed himself. He caught up to Kingsley, who was striding triumphantly out onto the exterior elevator, its glass curvature giving the occupants a perfect view of New York. Harry shoved his way in beside him.
“I know what you're doing.”
”Oh?”
”Manipulating the board into upgrading the Aerial Soldier armor. First-class job. But I can see right through you.”
”Harry, the stress is getting to you. Why don't you sell your share in the company and shack up on some beach for the rest of your days? Instead of continuing to squander your father's legacy on whatever fancies you...”
Harry settled an aggressive hand on Kingsley’s shoulder. “You have no idea what my father’s legacy is…”
Kingsley grabbed his hand and twisted it painfully, shoving Harry up against the elevator’s grass wall so suddenly that Harry thought for a moment he would simply plummet.
“Stay out of my way unless you want to get hurt,” Kingsley hissed.
Harry sneered. ”My father would've chewed you up and spit you out.”
”Well guess what, junior? Your daddy's dead and gone. He can't protect you anymore. Things change, Osborn. You can either go with the flow... or get swept under.”
The elevator dinged and Kingsley roughly released the other man, straightening his suit before stepping out. Harry watched him go before hitting the top button. He wanted to look out on the city as he rose above it. He wanted to imagine himself flying.
***
Patch was getting that prickly feeling again and it had nothing to do with the height as he climbed up the ladder to Spider-Man’s nest. How had the boss known that Spider-Man would come to him for information? And what was the point of siccing the wall-crawler on some yuppie scumbag? He didn’t like getting into jobs more complicated than break into this and take that, but for the money the boss was paying…
Finally swinging himself onto solid ground, Patch pointed at the neon sign. “There. That’s the spot where the freak lives!”
With a whisper of fire, the Hobgoblin rose up behind him. Floodlights shot out of the glider, spotlighting a spider made out of web. It was partially evaporated. Hobgoblin flew through it, ripping it apart like a cotton puff.
”His girlfriend, I presume?”
Hobgoblin reached down and grabbed the informant him.
”Hey, wait a minute! I did everything like you said!”
”And I thank you for that. Along with some of the other bait I’ve dangled, that should take at least one obstacle out of my path. Unfortunately, should Parker live through the little trap I’ve set for him, he’ll come straight back to you… and you’ll lead him straight to me.”
Patch was getting the dizzyingly high feeling of being in the middle of business way over his head. “Parker? Who’s Parker?”
The Hobgoblin dangled him over the edge of the roof. Suddenly the twist in Patch’s gut matched the vertigo in his brain.
“You’re fired, Patch. I’m letting you go.”
Patch screamed all the way to slightly above the ground, when he thought he really should meditate or come up with something to think into the afterlife other than all-consuming fright, but then he went splat.
”And don’t even think about using me as a reference,” Hobgoblin called down to the now much flatter hoodlum.
***
Menken’s penthouse apartment looked a stark white in the moonlight, like bone. Spider-Man let go of his webline and did a few somersaults to break up his momentum, then splayed himself for a landing. He hit the wall with a bob, clinging to it, and found himself face to face with an odd scratch in the concrete. He looked around for what might have caused it. Found nothing, except that there was a trail of them going up and down. One went all the way to the ground, the next went up to a window.
“Donald Menken, I presume,” Spider-Man mused before flinging himself through an open window.
The room was tastefully appointed, if messy, in the generic mold of someone whose idea of haute couture came from IKEA. In a black leather chair facing away from him, the owner sat, a wineglass dangling from his hand. Spider-Man scuttled across the ceiling before dropping down behind him. “Hey, Don, I was wondering if you could help me with my homework…”
He spun the chair around. Donald Menken was a slender man in his forties. Peter would’ve gotten a look at his face, only it was turned toward the back of the chair. 180 degrees around.
“Doc Ock.”
That was the magic word… well, two words. Spider-Man was out the window and begging his spider-sense for something more concrete than the vague sense of unease he’s gotten in Menken’s apartment. It wasn’t messy, Ock had just been there. If the police hadn’t arrived yet to investigate the struggle, that meant Otto couldn’t have gone far.
Twenty stories down and across the street, a man in a green trenchcoat with a bowl haircut was getting into a car. Spider-Man dove, broke his face at the last second with a whipping webline to a streetlight, and rolled to a crouch-stop beside the car. He grabbed him through the open window… and saw someone who was most definitely not Doc Ock.
“What do you want from me!?” Not!Ock yelped.
That’s when Peter’s spider-sense painted a flashing red arrow at the sound of clanking pseudopods in the alley just over yonder.
“Sorry, my mistake,” Spider-Man said, releasing the man and vaulting over his car. “And get a better haircut.”
He emerged onto the other side of the alley to find a crowded intersection. One nondescript green car was honking its horn like there was no tomorrow. Red-lighted tentacles were crowding the windows like small children or plush toys.
Spider-Man took a wild leap and landed in front of the car, holding up one hand in a crossing-guard stop gesture. “Ock, Ock, Ock, we’re drifting apart. You don’t call, you don’t write…”
Ock’s tentacles cracked the back doors open and slithered down along the road towards Spider-Man.
“No. Only kill.”
Spider-sense! Danger! Spider-Man leapt out of the way as the tentacles struck, clashing against each other in a shower of sparks. He landed behind the green car and flipped it over onto the sidewalk. Octavius let his tentacles pull himself out of the overturned car, bringing him face to face with Spider-Man.
”Was that a rental?” the webslinger asked, rubbing his masked chin. “Because it looks like it Hertz!”
Octavius clenched his teeth and lanced forward with his taser tentacle. Spider-Man collared it with his hands, keeping the deadly tip from touching him, but the momentum knocked him off his feet and carried him through a storefront window. Glass crashed and shattered.
Octavius shook his tentacle, then pulled it back. The taser retracted and became just another claw to lift Otto up, then carry him away through honking traffic.
Spider-Man leapt out through the broken window, landing on a parking meter like a flagpole meter. The cars were taking off in a wild panic, trying to get away from the battle royale. In their rush, they sparked and rammed each other in an orgy of fender-benders. Spider-Man leapt from roof to roof of the real-life bumper car rink.
Octavius clambered up a streetlight, ripping down a traffic light with his tentacles and flinging it at Spider-Man. It glanced off the hero’s arm, sending him flying down between two cars on a collision course. He hit with legs coiled and jumped back up, butterfly-splitting over the head-on collision before shooting out a webline.
While Spidey was occupied, Ock had caught on a ride on a speeding Acura. He ramrodded a tentacle through the driver’s side window and ripped the driver out, throwing him aside like a piece of roadside litter.
Spider-Man swung down and snatched the driver out of the path of oncoming traffic, throwing him out to land safely on a restaurant awning. He kept swinging after the Acura. But the buildings were running out, giving way to the East River shoreline and the Brooklyn Bridge. Spider-Man knew there was no way he could catch up to the Acura by running. He looked around for another option… and found a fancy-looking BMW with the top down.
Oh man… I never thought I'd be happy to see you.
Plus, I was playing a lot of the Ghostbusters video game. Fun stuff.
Harry Osborn looked at himself in the mirror and for the first time in a while was pleased with what he saw. He was, in the most important way, his father’s son. He’d stopped drinking, started paying attention, and dealt with the Spider-Man… issue in a calm, rational manner. For the first time since Mary-Jane had left him, there was a certain peace to his turbulent world.
“You're Harry Osborn, you're Harry Osborn, you're Harry Osborn...” he told his reflection, a mantra psyching himself up. He kept repeating it as he pulled the capsule from his pocket. It was two inches long and the width of a shot glass. The metal framework housed a transparent material, letting him see the potent green liquid inside. Harry pulled down his collar and held one end of the capsule to the side of his neck.
”You're Harry Osborn, you're Harry Osborn, you're Harry Osborn...”
He braced himself and pressed the other end of the capsule. With a pneumatic hiss, the liquid disappeared into his body. He shuddered in pleasure for a moment, then blinked several times.
“I'm Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn...”
***
When he walked out into the boardroom, it was as a different person. That was the easiest way to think of it. As his father said, Harry was weak. But Harold was strong. Confident. Smooth. A captain of industry.
Harold sat at the head of the table, in his father’s throne. “Shall we get started?”
Waterson was the oldest and most experienced of the board members. He spoke first. “We can't. Our newest member isn't here yet.”
”New member?”
Kingsley flashed a cocky grin to Harold as he sat down at the opposite end of the table. ”Sorry I'm late. Had a killer day at the office. So, what's the emergency?”
Harold tugged at his collar, suddenly feeling very much like Harry.
“No emergency,” Waterson said, “merely the day-to-day routines of a growing business. Although... if you'll all remember the 'Aerial Soldier' project...”
”Before my time. Could you spell it out for me?”
”Quit playing games, Kingsley,” Harry said, a bit louder than necessary. “You know exactly what we're talking about.”
”And just in case anyone doesn't...” Waterson began passing folders down the table.
“My God!” Kingsley said upon receiving his. “This is...”
”The Goblin. We know.”
”Do the police?”
Harry could see the board’s apprehension was getting out of control. He stood. He was Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn, Harry Osborn… ”Calm down. They know this company was broken into days before the original Goblin made his appearance. There is no liability here. We're not looking at another Big Tobacco settlement.”
”Well, unless we're going to claim responsibility for this new attacker, I don't see why our plausible deniability has been destroyed.” Kingsley shuffled the report. “Our contractor in the Pentagon is very impressed with what the Goblin's managed to do. Both of them have waged one-person guerilla campaigns against a vastly overwhelming force.”
Harry erased a crick from his neck. ”Let me guess. They want to know what it would cost for some of these babies to 'fall off the back of the truck' and into the hands of some freedom fighters.”
Kingsley nodded, smiling. The rest of the board mirrored him, like a family of bobbleheads.
”I think you're all forgetting one key detail. We designed this craft to do exactly what it did... kill people and wreck havoc. I vote that we bury this topic. As far as I'm concerned, the Aerial Soldier project never existed.”
***
Harry’s hands were clenched into fists, hard and tight, as he left the board room. No matter how many times he told himself he was the Harry Osborn, he never quite believed himself. He caught up to Kingsley, who was striding triumphantly out onto the exterior elevator, its glass curvature giving the occupants a perfect view of New York. Harry shoved his way in beside him.
“I know what you're doing.”
”Oh?”
”Manipulating the board into upgrading the Aerial Soldier armor. First-class job. But I can see right through you.”
”Harry, the stress is getting to you. Why don't you sell your share in the company and shack up on some beach for the rest of your days? Instead of continuing to squander your father's legacy on whatever fancies you...”
Harry settled an aggressive hand on Kingsley’s shoulder. “You have no idea what my father’s legacy is…”
Kingsley grabbed his hand and twisted it painfully, shoving Harry up against the elevator’s grass wall so suddenly that Harry thought for a moment he would simply plummet.
“Stay out of my way unless you want to get hurt,” Kingsley hissed.
Harry sneered. ”My father would've chewed you up and spit you out.”
”Well guess what, junior? Your daddy's dead and gone. He can't protect you anymore. Things change, Osborn. You can either go with the flow... or get swept under.”
The elevator dinged and Kingsley roughly released the other man, straightening his suit before stepping out. Harry watched him go before hitting the top button. He wanted to look out on the city as he rose above it. He wanted to imagine himself flying.
***
Patch was getting that prickly feeling again and it had nothing to do with the height as he climbed up the ladder to Spider-Man’s nest. How had the boss known that Spider-Man would come to him for information? And what was the point of siccing the wall-crawler on some yuppie scumbag? He didn’t like getting into jobs more complicated than break into this and take that, but for the money the boss was paying…
Finally swinging himself onto solid ground, Patch pointed at the neon sign. “There. That’s the spot where the freak lives!”
With a whisper of fire, the Hobgoblin rose up behind him. Floodlights shot out of the glider, spotlighting a spider made out of web. It was partially evaporated. Hobgoblin flew through it, ripping it apart like a cotton puff.
”His girlfriend, I presume?”
Hobgoblin reached down and grabbed the informant him.
”Hey, wait a minute! I did everything like you said!”
”And I thank you for that. Along with some of the other bait I’ve dangled, that should take at least one obstacle out of my path. Unfortunately, should Parker live through the little trap I’ve set for him, he’ll come straight back to you… and you’ll lead him straight to me.”
Patch was getting the dizzyingly high feeling of being in the middle of business way over his head. “Parker? Who’s Parker?”
The Hobgoblin dangled him over the edge of the roof. Suddenly the twist in Patch’s gut matched the vertigo in his brain.
“You’re fired, Patch. I’m letting you go.”
Patch screamed all the way to slightly above the ground, when he thought he really should meditate or come up with something to think into the afterlife other than all-consuming fright, but then he went splat.
”And don’t even think about using me as a reference,” Hobgoblin called down to the now much flatter hoodlum.
***
Menken’s penthouse apartment looked a stark white in the moonlight, like bone. Spider-Man let go of his webline and did a few somersaults to break up his momentum, then splayed himself for a landing. He hit the wall with a bob, clinging to it, and found himself face to face with an odd scratch in the concrete. He looked around for what might have caused it. Found nothing, except that there was a trail of them going up and down. One went all the way to the ground, the next went up to a window.
“Donald Menken, I presume,” Spider-Man mused before flinging himself through an open window.
The room was tastefully appointed, if messy, in the generic mold of someone whose idea of haute couture came from IKEA. In a black leather chair facing away from him, the owner sat, a wineglass dangling from his hand. Spider-Man scuttled across the ceiling before dropping down behind him. “Hey, Don, I was wondering if you could help me with my homework…”
He spun the chair around. Donald Menken was a slender man in his forties. Peter would’ve gotten a look at his face, only it was turned toward the back of the chair. 180 degrees around.
“Doc Ock.”
That was the magic word… well, two words. Spider-Man was out the window and begging his spider-sense for something more concrete than the vague sense of unease he’s gotten in Menken’s apartment. It wasn’t messy, Ock had just been there. If the police hadn’t arrived yet to investigate the struggle, that meant Otto couldn’t have gone far.
Twenty stories down and across the street, a man in a green trenchcoat with a bowl haircut was getting into a car. Spider-Man dove, broke his face at the last second with a whipping webline to a streetlight, and rolled to a crouch-stop beside the car. He grabbed him through the open window… and saw someone who was most definitely not Doc Ock.
“What do you want from me!?” Not!Ock yelped.
That’s when Peter’s spider-sense painted a flashing red arrow at the sound of clanking pseudopods in the alley just over yonder.
“Sorry, my mistake,” Spider-Man said, releasing the man and vaulting over his car. “And get a better haircut.”
He emerged onto the other side of the alley to find a crowded intersection. One nondescript green car was honking its horn like there was no tomorrow. Red-lighted tentacles were crowding the windows like small children or plush toys.
Spider-Man took a wild leap and landed in front of the car, holding up one hand in a crossing-guard stop gesture. “Ock, Ock, Ock, we’re drifting apart. You don’t call, you don’t write…”
Ock’s tentacles cracked the back doors open and slithered down along the road towards Spider-Man.
“No. Only kill.”
Spider-sense! Danger! Spider-Man leapt out of the way as the tentacles struck, clashing against each other in a shower of sparks. He landed behind the green car and flipped it over onto the sidewalk. Octavius let his tentacles pull himself out of the overturned car, bringing him face to face with Spider-Man.
”Was that a rental?” the webslinger asked, rubbing his masked chin. “Because it looks like it Hertz!”
Octavius clenched his teeth and lanced forward with his taser tentacle. Spider-Man collared it with his hands, keeping the deadly tip from touching him, but the momentum knocked him off his feet and carried him through a storefront window. Glass crashed and shattered.
Octavius shook his tentacle, then pulled it back. The taser retracted and became just another claw to lift Otto up, then carry him away through honking traffic.
Spider-Man leapt out through the broken window, landing on a parking meter like a flagpole meter. The cars were taking off in a wild panic, trying to get away from the battle royale. In their rush, they sparked and rammed each other in an orgy of fender-benders. Spider-Man leapt from roof to roof of the real-life bumper car rink.
Octavius clambered up a streetlight, ripping down a traffic light with his tentacles and flinging it at Spider-Man. It glanced off the hero’s arm, sending him flying down between two cars on a collision course. He hit with legs coiled and jumped back up, butterfly-splitting over the head-on collision before shooting out a webline.
While Spidey was occupied, Ock had caught on a ride on a speeding Acura. He ramrodded a tentacle through the driver’s side window and ripped the driver out, throwing him aside like a piece of roadside litter.
Spider-Man swung down and snatched the driver out of the path of oncoming traffic, throwing him out to land safely on a restaurant awning. He kept swinging after the Acura. But the buildings were running out, giving way to the East River shoreline and the Brooklyn Bridge. Spider-Man knew there was no way he could catch up to the Acura by running. He looked around for another option… and found a fancy-looking BMW with the top down.
Oh man… I never thought I'd be happy to see you.
The_Lurker
Date: 2009-09-03 09:56 am (UTC)The spidercar has the following features:
AM/FM radio only playing the 60's cartoon theme song
Lights that flash the famous spider-signal...and can shoot webs too!
Speakers for yelling at evil-doers and to whistle to the ladies
No breaks, breaks are for lame people only
It can turn into a Mecha, but then, for some reason, the speaker will only let the driver speak in japanese
The_Lurker
Date: 2009-09-03 12:30 pm (UTC)Re: The_Lurker
Date: 2009-09-03 01:25 pm (UTC)