JMJ

ONE

In part he wished that he had never come up with that idea of having his base of operations at the asylum. Naturally it had been a plot worthy of remembrance: to run his master plan from a hospital bed so cleverly while faking a desire for a cure from a mental condition that did not exist. Old school, perhaps, but the proven schemes are proven for a reason. No matter how many times they are committed fools never catch on to them. But the doctors could not be blamed entirely. After all the short round physique, the baby face, and the tremulous little voice of Octavius had been put to good use.

Who would have suspected the behind the shudders and whimpers of such a pitiful mass writhing with guilt and terror in the bowels of the psychiatric system would be laughing inside at the incompetence of a concerned staff? They would be better suited for soothing traumatized children than trying their hands at hardened criminal masterminds.

But now he had been exposed for some time. His master plan had been foiled, and a long time of evading capture while playing with crime lords, manipulating super criminals, and toying with vixens came to an end after a fight with Spiderman. Interestingly enough, though few believed he could ever be "cured", the state seemed to prefer him locked away in an asylum like some lunatic out of Gotham than to be sent off to prison. Every time he escaped afterwards (this being the second time since the battle for the city against Silver Mane and L. Thompson Lincoln) Ravencroft was where he returned.

There may have been a time when an emotionally distraught Otto Octavius was near to having a nervous breakdown. When a feeble and disillusioned science nerd, already wounded by how people used his brilliant but underappreciated brain, was sickened to near insanity by the inhuman coldness he witnessed and by the evils he himself was forced commit. That was long in the past now. They would find nothing but that his mind had been physically altered in a way that enabled who used to be a patsy scientist to overcome all fear and weakness. All frailty had given birth to perfected evolution. Something like that could not be cured.

Yet, analysis after analysis took him nowhere. Drug after drug were tested in vain even if most of the time he got out of taking them by spitting them back out later. And talks after talks, and even a few scans of his brain were all a waste of everyone's time and taxpayer money. He possessed a far more comfortable room than in prison, no doubt about that, but perhaps it was worse to have to be prodded incessantly by psychiatric staff, trying so hard to find something that was not there to find—that most did not even believe they would find. Not anymore. Ironically, had he wanted to reform his life, it would have been difficult to say the least to convince the now incredibly suspicious doctors and orderlies at Ravencroft who watched his every move. So were the procedures wrought upon him some sort of punishment?

Ravencroft could think what it willed, at present however. That is, if they even knew what they thought there. Doctor Octopus was now free, and he had no intention of returning to either asylum or prison again. He had learned from his mistakes. Every precaution had to be taken to ensure victory, and celebrating even a moment before the victory had come was the worst thing a villain could do.

He was now driving down the streets of the city in a truck he had acquired upon his slipping away the night before. All had been meticulously planned from the moment he made an orderly believe that a new drug had taken an affect for the worse to the point when he would in the near future retrieve his arms.

A hideout, though primitive, awaited him not far away. It was a simple place for low key activity until he made his next move.

There stood a large building nearby with vehicles parked out in front of it, and it seemed a decent opportunity to abandon the truck as any, he thought. He could take a cab the rest of the way to the hideout. In a long trench coat, which hid the fact that he was still wearing Ravencroft pajamas and that his back had the protruding ends of his mechanical arms sticking out of the back plate of the harness that could never be removed, he parked and stepped outside. In the chilly December morning a coat and hat would not be seen as anything but normal, and he had a very harmless appearance. An unassuming, meek-looking, rotund, little man, he would not easily be recognized as a super villain without a vile sneer on his face and a set of four black tentacle-like arms snapping with the force and speed of lighting from behind his back.

He would not have given the building he passed or the event for which the cars had corralled around it a second thought with a mind so bent on retrieving the arms detached from his harness. But then out of the corner of his eye he saw someone he recognized.

Instinctively, Doctor Octopus turned just enough to get a better look and to make certain he had seen what he thought he had. Yes. He had seen that man before under the employ of L. Thompson Lincoln.

Doctor Octopus' eyes narrowed with interest.

Lincoln should not have been up to anything at present. He was under the tightest watch and any suspicious movement of his would be most unwise if he wanted to pretend he could keep up his façade as a rich philanthropist. Perhaps the man here was only going to a café across the street for a coffee and a donut, but Doctor Octopus truly doubted it. The man did not look like the café sort, and he would know, for Otto Octavius had once been a frequenter of such places himself.

Pulling the hat on his head slightly lower to cover his face, he watched carefully as the man disappeared inside the building. He glanced up at the boldly decorated sign set up for temporary use near the door. There was a science expo of some kind going on inside. Recalling mention of this somewhere in the paper while he was back in Ravencroft, he could think of nothing out of the ordinary about the event, though, he had a good guess that something or someone of interest took place there that would arouse Lincoln. Science experiments were the greatest form of warfare in this city, after all.

Hesitating a moment, he considered the option of continuing on to the hideout and forgetting about the entire affair. He would not be equipped in the event that things should go awry. Yet despite the risks, he could not help his curiosity. A look around, especially with so many commoners crowded about, certainly would do no harm if he remained on his guard. So without further delay, he strode casually through the doors.

But once inside Lincoln's man was nowhere to be found.

Slightly disappointed but even more suspicious he stepped inside and did a good job pretending to be impressed with the projects around him.

Then he caught sight of the man off to the side at a bench where another man was seated. The seated man stood up and the two of them exchanged a mild acknowledgement of each other and said something that was inaudible to Doctor Octopus as he made his way nonchalantly closer. He went as close as he dared and pretended to be reading a sign as he listened.

There were only scraps of phrases he managed to catch and these were mostly unintelligible as to their full meaning. He strained harder to listen, and if he heard correctly he could just make something about genetics.

Ah, aren't we being reckless? he thought with a sneer.

Unless this man was no longer working for Lincoln at all, but for some other powerful rogue.

Doctor Octopus considered this but briefly, for at that moment the pair began to walk into his direction.

Doctor Octopus stepped back a bit and rested his hand on a machine nearby the exhibit he had been in front of and listened to the footsteps as they passed him by. He made certain there was no possible way of either man recognizing him without appearing suspicious. After a few more minutes, he then took his leave of the area and moved into the crowd.

#

–1984

Punk rock blared through the house. It pulsed with an eerie whine through vents and pounded brutishly through walls. It was not the usual sound of the household. It made the very foundations recoil with shock. No music of the kind had been sounded in the weary vintage structure until very recently as an affect of the eighties and of having a high hormone, teenage girl in the house trying to get over the funks of adolescence. Everyone in the house knew that the rest of the world by now had been completely drowned out of her mind.

"Mandy!" called a voice from down the stairs.

Mandy did not hear.

"Mandy!" shouted the little round mother up the stairwell wobbling as though on a dozen rickety knees from the vibrations of the war of rock. "Turn that down! NOW!"

The music lowered to a much more moderate volume. "What?"

"Please, Mandy. It's too loud!"

"Okay, okay!"

Everything was then quiet save for the now muffled music treading lightly under the cracks of the door of Mandy's younger brother's room.

Otto Octavius had been trying desperately to concentrate on his homework and now with a look of satisfaction, he let out a relieved, exaggerated sigh as he relaxed back into his seat with head up at the ceiling. After a moment or two of reveling in the silence, he straightened his jacket which he wore because the heat vent did not work well in his room. Then turning to his science report on his desk he mused over where he had left off. He had been working on it for weeks now. With the added visual aid of the simple remote control robotic device, which he proudly created all on his own, and the countless hours spent on his written portion of the report, it was to be the finest work of his elementary school career.

Unable to resist the self-made allure of the object and of using it again, he took hold of the remote which he used to make the crane-like object scoop up the coin and release it into the empty jelly jar. It was a masterpiece, if he did say so himself. Of course, as a perfectionist he knew there was always room for improvement, which with more time he would have been sure to add.

The usually so mild and so shy, young Otto smiled proudly to himself now and then returned to his report, holding it up in front of him in a most professional manner.

However, just as he was going to correct a sentence he did not like, he stopped short. He did not know what it was at first but it was then that a very strange feeling swam over him. He was not ill or afraid. It was a sort of buzz through the very core of his body in which, although he could perceive it, he felt as though his whole body was on hold as though in a web of static.

He did not have long to think about it either.

It was at that moment that the room around him seemed to dematerialize right in front of him. He let out a gasp and felt a faint sting through him; but it was much too late to do anything even if he had been capable. One moment he was in his room, the next—

#

"Hey, excuse me, sir."

Doctor Octopus turned sharply around, glaring dangerously at the man who dared address him with such a tone of contempt.

"Keep your son away from the displays," continued the man in a gruff manner.

"My … what?!"

The man, not seeming to have heard this, carelessly motioned a small boy forward towards his supposed father.

Boy and super villain stared at each other in awkward silence.

"Just don't touch anything," the man said to the boy and then departed.

Doctor Octopus decided it was high time to leave himself. The door was never reached however much he wanted to go back to his hideout and, what was of far greater importance, retrieving his arms later. But again he stopped. A delayed double take over took him as he turned once more to look at the boy.

He sensed something strange about that child. Something in the way he carried himself. He looked about him timidly, almost with trepidation, but there was something about the way he examined his surroundings with more purpose than other children his age might when lost as this boy obviously was. Thought he darted out of people's way and cowered if someone looked at him too long there remained a shy practicality, a reserve that did not hide his intellectual competency for one his age. Even the way he dressed in a vintage 80's puffy jacket zipped partway up caused some scrutiny. His thick dark brown hair had a familiar set of bangs messy and in need of a trim. There was just something too about the way his large blue eyes shifted uneasily behind a pair of thick glasses taped together across the bridge of his nose

This curious fascination however soon changed to aggravation. Doctor Octopus' own reserve was all but forgotten as he pushed his way towards the boy. Grabbing him roughly by the shoulder and spinning him around towards him, Doctor Octopus looked at him hard.

"Who are you?" the good doctor demanded.

For a moment the boy only stared; he eyes seemed to grow larger and his small round form to shrink as he retreated backward.

"… Otto," said the boy in a barely audible voice.

Doctor Octopus glowered. "Otto who?"

"Otto," the boy hesitated and twiddled his fingers a little as he hunched into his shoulders. "Octavius."

Doctor Octopus pulled the boy forward dangerously. "Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?"

The boy let out a cry.

Instantly, he released his hold on the boy's jacket and peered over his shoulder at the people looking his way. All this attention was not good, especially without his arms and so soon after his escape. He looked down at the boy and stepped back a pace. For a moment the words spoken between the two men he had been spying on earlier came back to him.

"Genetics …" he hissed to himself.

It was farfetched. Way too farfetched, and yet …

The supposed younger Otto Octavius meanwhile had been trying to slip away from his preoccupied captor and was just about in the clear when Doctor Octopus snatched him by the wrist. Pulling him across the room he caught sight of one of the men again — the one he had seen working for Lincoln.

Angrily and quickly, he pulled the boy around a corner towards the bathrooms.

"Who are your parents?" he asked in a serious whisper.

The names were given correctly.

"Where do you live?"

The location exact to the very house number.

Doctor Octopus continued to frown and for a time said nothing, not allowing himself to so much as blink at the spectral form before him.

The little boy looked up briefly at the expo sign above him if only to avoid the horrible leer, but he was distracted by what he saw.

"2009," the boy whispered and he turned pale. After a moment of thought himself he whispered fearfully, "I'm 33 years old." Again he paused and looked back up at Doctor Octopus unsteadily.

Whether brainwashed kidnapped child, a clone, or something else, there was no way the boy could remain here or anywhere for that matter. The boy was coming with him.

At once Doctor Octopus pulled the boy towards the door. The boy knew what was best for him at least and did not struggle. The limp cold air outside was soon to greet them, and once on the street and away from close onlookers, he began to pull faster and rougher.

The child whimpered, and almost tripping to keep up he let out a yelp and a cry for his mother.

At the end of the block he swung he child around again towards him and ordered through tightly gritted teeth: "Don't talk. Drop that pathetic pout. Don't do anything except follow me quietly. Is that clear?"

The boy nodded and quivered slightly.

Doctor Octopus held up his hand. "Not. One. Sound." He straightened then and said, "Now to hail a cab …"