Otto Octavius

The Return of the Octopus

The cure had been a both surprising and infuriatingly simple feat for Victor to perform. What appeared to be a beginners level ritual, he had told Otto that it was more gathering the ingredients that required the most effort. He meant of course stealing them from other multiverses, something which he had been slow to work with until Octavius had finished his work. It had been a great success, Eobard being a great deliveyman of supplies to the construction site at the base of the world station. Now his work was finished something new had taken his focus, the reconstruction of his robotic tentacles, smarter, faster and stronger than beforen he was nearly done. Now Victor could use the station to bring specific items here it took pressure of the speedster who had seemed strained in the last couple of weeks and was difficult to speak with. The door to his workshop swished open, he expected Doom to be there, arriving with the rare nuclear material that powered them.

Instead, Lex Luthor stood there. "Hello Otto."

"Hmm." He mused loudly, the bald scientist hadn't been at the station in weeks, instead he had been securing property and promoting his new brand and himself as the founder of Lexcorp in New York. "What're you doing here?"

He approached his workbench "I was wondering what you plan to do with yourself after, this." he said, gesturing casually to the tentacles stretched across the rooms metal tables.

Otto had considered this, he knew that Victor planned to accrue power once his entertainment grew stale and had promised him similar gains. To kill Spider-man again and again. "May I answer your question with a question?"

"Of course.

"Why do you care?"

"We four, You, Victor, Eobard and I. We are the greatest minds this planet has ever seen. They have Einstein, they have Hawking, but we outstrip them, do we not?"

Otto knew he certainly did. "Yes, but Lex, get to the point."

He smiled. "Octavius Technologies." Luthor gestured grandly. "A member of the Lexcorp family."

"What do you mean Luthor?" Otto said, a little annoyed. "You take me for some people-pleasing boardroom snake like you?"

Lex didn't flinch at the insult. "No Octavius, I believe that is where your skills suffer." He smirked. "Put simply, I fund any project you might take an interest in, I'll modify it for sale, giving us both tremendous wealth and power."

"Why would I agree to let you modify my work?" Otto growled.

"It's simple, you have created something beneath here that will keep the Station running for three- four decades with clean, waste free energy. Without Victor and Thawnes intervention here it would've been a near century before this world saw the likes of it. I help you take your technology and, for all intents and purposes, make it worse."

"Why would you make it worse?"

"A super-battery like this could power New York for how long?" Lex asked earnestly.

"City or State? State, maybe fifty years, the city maybe seventy." Otto said with a shrug.

"So we make one that can power just the city for a year." He said, also speaking with his hands. "We give it to them for free, a gift from Lexcorp with the promise that you can power the entire state by the time the first is empty... But not for free. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to power that city, even if we say we can do it for a third of the price you become a multimillionaire every single year." Otto opened his mouth to rebuttal but Lex cut him off. "Soon, every city government in every country is going to be clawing at this and we will have them all on a renewable contract."

"You certainly are a salesman Luthor." Otto said with a sly smile. "But I don't want to work on power sources full time." He thought back to his talk with Victor and killing the entire Spiderverse. "I will have other things on my mind."

"Of course Otto and that is the beauty of our positions as company leaders, we can work on what we want. When we want." Lex said. "What you would be releasing is products in the six or seventh edition. We would strip them back and stagger their releases, I mean the general public won't be seeing your current battery model for at least..." He seemed to concentrate for a second, his still active hands hovering for a moment. "...another twenty five years and by that time, you'd already be a multi-billionaire. I guarantee it."

Otto thought for a second, partnering up with Lex Luthor to become the head scientist of one of his tech companies and partnering up with Victor Von Doom, accruing power and killing Spider-man... Spider-men. It seemed to him as though he had to pick between one or the other and as he weighed up the option it clicked. His brow furrowed at his own self doubt. He was Otto Octavius. He was Doctor Octopus. He could work with both and win at both. Additionally, there wasn't a better place to achieve ultimate victory over Spiderman than in New York City. "You've got a deal Luthor." He said, holding up a hand to shake, they shook briefly and Otto looked up at him. "I suppose you want me to build you a megabattery?"

"That is the first step in the plan," He chuckled "-but of course in the mean time I can have a building selected as a home base for Octavius Technologies and a state of the art laboratory and workshop installed there."

"What this earth considers state of the art?" His gaze had returned to his half finished tentacles, he wondered where Victor was with their fuel source or if he had even retrieved it through the Stations engine yet. The scientist-wizard had been so absorbed in watching his picks interact with this virgin earth.

"Hmm, indeed, the difference is shocking at times." Lex laughed. "Send me specifications, I will make sure you're equipped efficiently."

"Good, I'll begin work in a few days, I'll be in touch." Otto said, clearly finished with the conversation, turning his back to Luthor to look for a fine tool.