AN: I don't own Mr. Octavius. I do own Kat. So bwah.
STUPID THING doesn't bold my STUFF! ....
tell me if it's confusing to read. if so, I'll put something into it to make it easier.
::beats fanfiction . net over the head with a tentacle-stick::
Our Future
– By t3h misspelled fish – kod.
5
She had called them a psychologist's dream come true....but now that she thought about it, perhaps they were a nightmare? There were so many questions that could be answered by talking to them, and yet, her spine was chilled by the seemingly horrific notion that machines could think on the level of humans.
Her cell phone beeped. She flipped open the cover and looked at the screen, and it gave her a simple message:
You have class at noon, bitch!
She grinned at the cell phone and fondly remembered Jessi programming those messages into her phone, none of them very kind at all. She cancelled the message and glanced at the time on her phone.
"11:45 ALREADY?! Shit! I'm gonna be SOOOO late!" she grabbed her books out of the piles of crap and looked into the bedroom, "Tentacle-boy I have class bye!" She slammed the door and ran out, the apartment door being slammed also.
The tentacles glanced at each other and then back at Otto. He groaned into the pillow, his eyes opening wearily, "Rosie?"
No.
He shook his head, his life returning. Rosie was dead. His companions were the arms fused to his back. He was in the bedroom of the college student Katarina Morrigan, "Kat?"
She had a college class to attend to.
"I'm alone in her apartment?"
No.
"Who else is here?"
Us.
Something about that was painful to Otto, and he winced. Sighing, he stood up and stretched. Two of the arms grabbed his shirt and coat, and he placed them on. He took several steps to steady himself, he opened the door and peered into the empty aparment.
"What time is it?"
11:52 AM.
With a shrug, he walked over to the refrigerator. He remembered these foods from when HE had gone to college...that seemed like a long, long, LONG time ago. His memories were hazy from then, and he tried to remember how he had lived without the arms. Anything before that had become very fuzzy, almost impossible to see. He could almost, barely remember his college days. Remembered living on ramen and eggo waffles and junk food.
He had many, many suspicions that his memory loss had been the arms' doing. They did want him to remember how he lived before they were around. And, quite frankly, he wasn't quite sure how he did anymore. He suspected it would like when they had just invented the computer, and the next generation couldn't live without it.
He pulled out a bag of potato chips and a slimfast bar. The arms protested at his choice of food, but he ignored them. THEY didn't have to worry about what he decided to eat...just as long as he ate, and somewhat healthily as well. He sat down in a chair, leaning back on the backrest (making sure all the arms were not getting squashed), and bit down on the chips, his eyes staring into space, absorbed in his own thoughts.
You liked us better when we were your children, Father?
Otto blinked for a moment and shook his head. He almost panicked before he realized he had been thinking shallowly...and that the arms could read his surface thoughts.
I did.
Because we were more obedient?
Because you were less destructive and cruel and cold and argumentative.
The arms pulled back from the man, looking as insulted as possible.
You were blinded, Otto. We were always this way. It is you who changed your vision. The fact we no longer suit your needs and bow to your every whim is because your every whim does not serve our purpose merely upsets you.
Oc sighed – the arm were right. This had been happening more and more, and it made the man distinctly uncomfortable. The feeling of being outsmarted by his children, and his own creation, made him feel, well, stupid. And knowing what the arms were capable of, he feared the day that he was outsmarted for perhaps the final time.
He didn't know what to do. There was no excitement, no action. The apartment was too small for much anything.
One of the arms handed him the TV remote, and he raised an eyebrow at it, a little suspicious.
Perhaps we will be on television again .
Otto didn't have anything else to do. He switched on the television and turned on the news.
"The police are undergoing a manhunt for the criminal known as Doc Oc, formally Doctor Otto Octavius. Thought dead, he had apparently risen again and christened his return with the destruction of a nightclub known as Fallen. Next, he brought Spiderman to the edge of his life, then apparently, trying to make his name look better, brought him to the hospital."
Oc fumed, "That wasn't me who nearly killed him!" He practically snarled at the box.
Remember what Kat said. To them, we are the same.
Octavius calmed, knowing there was not much else he could say to argue that point. He glanced back to the television, which now displayed two anchormen.
".....is armed—literally and metaphorically—and dangerous," The two anchorman chuckled at the pun, then returned to being serious, "If he is seen, please call the police so we may deal with his special needs the way they are supposed to be dealt with."
"Hah, real funny," He growled, shutting it off.
He let himself sink into a trance-like state. His memories were hazy, but with effort, some of the fog cleared. He tried to remember Rosie the most, though, never could succeed.
In all his memories, he couldn't quite fathom how he'd survived without the arms. What it was like without the extra voices in his head. True, the arms had been a complete pain in the ass, but there were things he could not have done without them. He remembered building the arms. That, he knew. It was a memory that had not been hazed along with so much. He remembered calling them his children, his babies, his life. He remembered programming the AI with such ecstasy, not even Rosie could calm him down. He did not remember the words she had used to calm him. Nor did he remember her involvement in the idea...but he knew someone had tried to calm him. And he could only assume it was her. He remembered running his hands down the arms, testing the claws and their many extensions, testing the neural link between him and them.
He did not remember that time when he used them to do his first reactor. He did not remember the lack of voice in his head, or the inhibitor chip. He did not remember controlling them singularly. Every time he tried to access that memory, he would think of the arms' personality, what they would have said there. What they would have done.
He remembered his fight with Spiderman. His bank-robbing, his second fusion generator. But among those memories, there we some he had lost more then others. He remembered some so violently that they almost gave him the same shock they had when he had done them.
"You're right." He had said to Spiderman, sitting in that brackish puddle. He had turned to the arms, then, "He's right!"
He remembered their anger. Their surge of sudden hate at him. The first time he had felt such.
Every time he thought about it, he felt that surge of anger and hate. Of suddenly realizing that their father was no longer under their control. No longer were they spoiled children.
He remembered pulling in the supports of the second fusion generator. He remembered the water. It was hot. Really hot. Scalding his body, sending his mind reeling into shock. He remembered the arms' frightened cry.
Father! We are frightened! Hold us!
He remembered moving, thought it wasn't so much he remembered the actual moving as he remembered the water moving around him. After, he remembered dryness.
The next thing he remembered was waking up on a rooftop only a few buildings away from Kat, his memories snapping back to him—the arms, the generator, spider-man, and now this.
And now he was here.
The tentacles, who did not suffer from unconsciousness, had filled in the blanks in his memories. Apparently, the arms had paddled and clung their way to safety and pulled themselves (and his body) onto the street. They had dragged him into a back alley, hoping he would survive, when, by a sheer luck, were stumbled on by a medical technician. Knowing only this man was going to die, the tech performed immediate CPR as the mechanical appendages hid under Otto's coat. He had brought the man back to life, and brought him to a tiny hospital in the middle of a slum to be treated. Luckily, Otto was a long ways in line, and was alone when he finally regained consciousness. First, he had thought he was dead, then had vomited up the water in the Hudson, followed by whatever else was in his stomach. Then he'd sunk back into unconsciousness, though his breathing was now even. The arms, relieved, had taken him too that rooftop. They knew he liked sun.
That's where he'd woken up two days later.
He knew he couldn't fully trust the story. But he took it into consideration.
The arms' mind grew up after that. Once a child fixed on pleasing his father, they were now stubborn adolescents who wanted only what they wanted and cared little for others' desires. But, he did have to hand it to them, they were behaving exceptionally as of late.
He heard the trill of pleasure at this that the tentacles had tried to suppress. He grinned to himself as well.
"It's quite alright to be pleased at yourself for making me happy," He said with a grin, giving a rare smile to one of the arms.
Hrmph.
Otto chuckled at the mechanical claw that was in his face, then gave it a playful shove.
What's so funny? The arms demanded.
"Nothing." He stood up and opened the window he'd used to go in and out many, many times. Sticking his head out, he glanced around for anything suspicious, then smiled at one of the arms.
You are serious?
"Children normally get rewards for good behavior."
The metal appendages didn't need any more explanation before practically jolting out of the cramped apartment. Had Octavius not been welded to the suit, he would have been thrown straight out and fell the twenty or so stories.
Scampered would probably be the best word to describe the rapid, flitting movements of the arms. This was no stretch, not at all. Their regrips were many and only a few feet away, and Otto feared for a fleeting moment the building would collapse. He was not concerned, really. Was this faster then they had gone to get Parker and take him to the police station? It was possible. The wind in his face beat against his face with such curiosity that his eyes began to tear even behind his sunglasses. It blew open his coat and little bits of rubble smashed into his bare skin from the front two arms that were gripping and regripping with such curiosity that they tore off cement more then normal. It hurt, but he didn't say anything. This was their reward – he'd let them keep it.
He wasn't quite sure how long they flew. He was enjoying the wind in his face and even the tearing in his eyes and the cement on his stomach before they finally stopped, his momentum sending him a bit forward, "Why have you stopped?" He asked curiously, glancing at one of the arms.
We were being reckless. We suspect someone has seen us.
Ock felt his throat constrict in fear.
Why are you frightened so?
"This...quiet life, I suppose you could say, besides the club, has not been bad to me. I would not want to be hunted so viciously, if someone saw us, they would come after us with much more force...and know exactly where to come as well. They could hurt Kat...I wouldn't want her blamed for this."
You are growing feelings for her. It was a statement. Not a question.
And if I am?
She is many, many years younger then you. Our knowledge of society suggests that this difference is frowned upon.
Otto shrugged in midair, blatantly changing the subject, "I do not want more people hurt then necessary."
The arms snorted in his mind. He could almost see humanlike features wrinkling in concern in his head, the voice of the tentacles worried,
Our trail will be easy to follow. Shall we return to Miss Morrigan?
"She won't be there."
We know that. Though, it seems it is somewhat of a safe haven for us and you. We fear the dents in the building may lead then close to---arggghh!
Close to.....?
No response. He looked at the tentacles that had grasped into the building. They were loosening. And his orders to them weren't working.
And Otto Octavius and his arms began to fall, thirty stories down.