The call came as soon as he walked in the door, the elevator door's to Rainbow Dash's Cloudsdale Apartments slid open as Peter Page-Turner took a look around his apartment. Rainbow wasn't home yet...neither was Gilda, the girls of his dreams. The apartment was all his, he could play games on Dash's PS3; or maybe read some of his prized comic collection. It had been some time since he and and Dash had managed to move his things into her apartment, a vast collection of nick nacks and odds and ends. Right now he only felt like kicking back, looking out the penthouse window with a glass of soda and watch the night go by. He placed his backpack on the island in the kitchen as something out the corner of his eye caught his attention...
Buenos Ares Argentina...
Everyday, several airliners send their armadas of plane across the skies. Night and day, weather permitting, these titans of steel seemingly defy the laws of nature and soar carrying countless individuals who are as strange and unknown to each other as they are to us. For now, we must shift our focus to a couple of those seemingly unknown, yet still familiar purveyors of the skywards to take a look at a man and woman. They boarded the Boeing 747 look almost any other passenger but their uniqueness to this tale begins with the notion that the woman is one mother to our hero miles away. The man her second husband who convinced her to live beyond the reach of our story in the mountainous country of beautiful Argentina
She turned to take on look at the runway and tarmac of the Buenos Ares airport and then back to the first class cabin her new husband's connections, much like their accommodations in this country, had netted them. "Do you really think we should be doing this Norman?" She said to him with a hint of nervousness in her voice. The one she called Norman only coughed a bit and adjusted the tie of his suit and said...
"They're coming back to Canterlot City to see you?! After they abandoned you and left you for South America?" Rainbow Dash said as she finished reading the letter. It was a letter from the embassy in Buenos Ares where the Turners where staying at. Peter had seen it on a stack of mail and it was if it was calling out to him specifically when he saw it. The letter spoke of his parents returning from the country they fled away too, leaving their house with unpaid mortgages and their son to fend for himself. Are you really gonna see them after the stunt they pulled?" Rainbow asked as Peter only got up from his seat, went over to the window and looked out to the skies above.
"Attention passengers, we're beginning out descent to Canterlot City airport, please return your trays to the upright position." The all too familiar message said over the plane's P.a System.
"I was wrong to just and up and leave him Lisa, I don't want to be the rich workaholic absent father cliche, a cliche a lot of people want to see die in a fire...apparently. He said combing back his slick widow's peak short buzz cut hair. Lisa Page-Turner looked at her husband trying to see sincerity in his voice, too hear it as his words ran freely from his lips. She couldn't tell if was genuine, or if years in front of his superiors and managing a big company had given Norman Robs Eon a hidden talent for bluffs.
"This isn't going to turn out to be some publicity move to look good fro Filthy Rich is it? I know you've been trying to have promote you to be his second in command of Bargain Bin inc.
"LLC Lisa, but more to the point it's not going to be some move to try and get on his good side...look remember how he would always be up til;l three in the morning reading those da...I mean, comic books of his?" Lisa thought back to one of the last times she saw her son. It was three in the morning and she was threatening to trash his entire collection if he didn't get to bed for school in the morning...she regretted doing that to him now.
"I'm going to see my mother, definitely her. That Norman guy can go hang for all I care." Peter said as he opened the fridge and grabbed a cold coke from the box. He popped the tab and guzzled it as if it was an ice cold can of Coors and he a solider dulling old war pains.
"Whoa...you hate your dad..." Rainbow began before getting cut off,
"Step...dad...Rainbow." He said wiping a twin stream of cola from his lips.
"Oh sorry, step dad so much you can't even call him your dad?" Rainbow said as she spun around in her chair to face him, a look of concern in her ruby red eyes and her face somber at the though of someone being so resentful of their parent. Peter only slammed the can down on the counter hard, the soda foamed out over the top and spilled across the Formica leaving a light brown bubbly trail to the crack between the edge and the fridge.
"I'm sorry babe, it's not you. It's him, I can't ever think of that man as a father. My real one was no better." He said as he wiped the counter clean, Rainbow got and crossed the room to him. She placed a hand on his shoulder lovingly and nudged her cheek to his. He softened up at her touch, letting out a please coo as she nuzzled him. He nuzzled her back and even rubbed his face tenderly in her rainbow hair softly.
"I just...I tried to find some common interest between us Lisa I really did." Norman said as the plane, now finally rolling across the tarmac of a new airport as it came in to the loading tube. "I even had some people I looked up make this for me." He said as he moved some suits aside in his suitcase until his wife looked over his shoulder. A rubber mas with a sickly green face and hideous yellow eyes made of see through cloth stared back at the couple. A folded up purple cap like an old elves cap from a fairy tale lay beside it and they could both see a green one piece jumpsuit inside.
"You planning on catching up on trick or treating with him?" She asked as her hand reached out and touched the mask, she retracted her hand somewhat when the mask didn't feel like cold latex. IT felt like warm flesh, warm; living flesh.
"My real dad cheated on my mom when I was eight, then he left for Jamaica with her when my mom wanted a divorce....after that some stories would have it someone uses that tragic past as a scapegoat to do horrible things, become a bully or think all life's problems are settled with your fists, I didn't." He said as his girlfriend held him close, she gently ran her soft but strong fingers through his hair. He could feel the beating of his heart in her chest as he planted his ear in between her chest and sighed at her touch.
"What'd you do?" She said softly as she placed a hand under his chin and tilted his head up to look into his eyes. Her red ones glimmering like rubies as he cried softly, ever so softly.
"I swore to not end up like him or anyone in my situation. I buckled down and became a good kid. Always did what my single mother told me, and was kind and helpful... A little on the unsocial side but not to were I was an antisocial hell raiser."
"I had it made so I could probably take him to a comic convention that's in town this month. Even if it's not something I like I thought I'd try and get in on what he likes and do some real paternal bonding...I just hope it's not too late...Lisa? You think Peter will accept my apology? And the offer? I know what I what did was elfish and stupid, but I just wanted him to grown up and become mature responsible man not into kid's stuff anymore you know?" He said as he snapped the mask on his face, to Lisa's surprise the mouth moved as he spoke and they eyes looked so real as they looked around when he tilted his head.
"I think my Peter is mature for his age Norman...when he needs to be." To her further surprise, the voice coming from the mask wasn't the soft spoken and yet authoritative tone Norman had before.
"Yeah I guess I should have seen that in him too." the voice was harsh raspy and like he was speaking with a half dozen shards of broken glass in his throat. With a high pitch that was like some twisted insane cartoon character crossed with a stark raving lunatic.
"Gah! Norm! How'd you get you're voice to sound like that? It's almost like the real thing." Linda said as the jaw moved almost like a real green face was talking to her as opposed to her second husband in a mask.
"I love you Rainbow." He said as he kissed her warm and tenderly full on the lips. She kissed him back with her own mouth pressing hard onto his as she wrapped her arms around his waist and drew her close to him. When the young lovers finally parted their lips, Peter brushed a few stray strands of hair from Rainbow's forehead back into place. She smiled warmly at him and chuckled softly at that.
"And I you Pete, so what do you say? Give you're folks one last chance? I mean I had spats with mine before but they love me just the same. Sides, what if this Norman Robs Eon is coming to try and make up for ditching you?"
"He'd be making more effort than my birth father if he is Dashie, he really would."
"Had the boys over at our sister company Intellitech make a few modifications. They first copied the mask and remade it with a martial that conforms to every shape of the wear's face. That way they jaw moves and the see through one way lens eyes look around. There's also an advanced voice synthesizer module microphone in the mouth piece...So far all but the most advanced of decryption and DE-scrambling audio analyzers can crack it. Makes me sound just like one of the guys who wore this silly getup." His wife was somewhat placated if not still nervous from looking at his mask. She giggled softly as she got up form her seat.
"Okay I'm sure he'll like it a lot...but Normy can you please take that silly thing off? It's still kinda creepy looking."
"That's the idea love muffin...That's the idea."
"Well...tomorrow after school, they're staying at the waterfront Hilton hotel...they said to drop in when I'm free....Dashie? I'll give him one last chance to be the dad I need...but don't deserve." Peter said with his back to her as he slide the patio door to her roof top pool deck open. He stepped across the threshold into the autumn chill of the night air, a few raindrops make him wish he could be melt like acid and intro the silent stones beneath his feet. Now he is feeling almost...More than ever Isolated. truly Alone; rejected by almost all he's ever cared for sans a select few, by those he only wanted love, compassion and understanding from save for her. He pulls sorrow from his core, a hurt that embodies all that is lowly and forlorn and pours his pain into a silent shriek that while silent to all ears, it's a wail that seems to call out to the very stars above.
He looked at the sickly yellow eyes one last time, they where harsh and complimented the lime green flesh of his mask nicely. Norman set it inside the Tiffany's shopping bag and looked around; the hotel room was a top floor suite by the waterfront, the best the Hilton could offer. He got up from the bed and made his way over to large bay view window that gazed out onto the skyline, the school would be dismissing his son soon. "Come on Pete, give me one more chance to show I can be the dad you always deserved." He said aloud to no but the silent and un-moving costumes in the bags.
When the bells of Canterlot High finally did ring and everyone made their rushes to the doors and leave, Peter was one of the few people not to be excited for the end of the day. It was for him the opening of old wounds he'd hoped had closed up long ago. How long ago as it that it seemed like all was lost? How long ago did it seem like he faced losing everything from the callousness of the people who should have mattered the most in his life? Yet here he was, about to reunite with them. His mother he could never hold a grudge against, but Norman? First there was his birth father, then their where all those men. Who tried to replace the one who had barley been there anyway, why should he be here to make amends with him? He looked across the street to the pier that looked out into the ocean, the crashing of the waves on the steel pillars below the dock was like a soft song that made the situation seems less difficult than it was.
"Hey...son...it's been a while." Norman said as the salty air was stirred up in the rousing surf streak as the ancient woof the pier they stood on creaked and swayed ever so slightly, part of him wanted the wood to crack and splinter taking them both into the cold depths with skeletons of shopping carts and the slimy ribbons of sea weed the only company and loving touch.
"Hello Norman." Was all he could say to the stone face of the man behind him, his back turned to him in an isolating manner, as he stood precariously close the dulled and cold steel of the dock railing. Norman sighed heartedly knowing that this was the kind of welcome the young man would give him knowing the terms they had parted on.
"I know you don't feel like you and I have the best of a bond in terms of me being your father...Peter. You have every right to be angry and far from any position to forgive me..."
"Forgive you? After how you left me to fend for myself just because you think the second I turned eighteen it automatically meant that I have all the means to fend for myself? You know what it's like to come home with a note saying you only have so little time to get so much done? And now you come back thinking that all it takes to get someone to forgive that kind of betrayal the heartbreak of having the ones who mean so much just....up and taken away from you?"
There was an eerie silence that seemed to go on for ages as Peter only looked down at the crashing waves, a cheap sterling silver watch in his hands ready to slip from the slender twig like digits of his fingers and onto the planks, or into the depths of the waves aND the bottom of the bay.
"I know I can't just buy your forgiveness or your love as a father and son back as easy as I can buy your mother new shoes...but all I ask is that you give me a chance, let me try and make it right, be the man I should have been and the father I could have been....please?" They said next to nothing as he finally turned around to face him, that face was not the face of a young man, but a resentful and confused one.
"What did you have in mind to start?" He said as Norman popped the latch of his briefcase, inside two slips of tickets to the comic book convention that would be in town lay on the two goblin masks and the tunics and hoods that the Hobgoblin and Green Goblin wore.
"Has them custom made, one of a kind, sure to win us a costume contest or two...son." Peter was not easily swayed he only scoff chuckled as he told Norman,
"Don't push it...Norman Osborn." He said with a smirk and chuckle as he took the Hobgoblin mask and his ticket.
