I don't really like this chapter. But...eh.

Ock belongs to Marvel, Kat belongs to me. Steal and die.

...short AN.

Our Future

By KoD

Unlike all the times he had hurt people, this time, he felt not remorse. Harry had deserved what he got. He should have killed the bastard. But his humanity kicked in at that moment, and he decided that leaving the boy with nothing to drink with would be decent.

"That was a lot of anger coming in.....in two...fell....swoops..." He smiled, a bit coldly, to himself as he glanced around from under his hat. The night crowd was starting to rise. He should return home, and quickly.

We are quite pleased.

As am I.

Finding an abandoned alleyway, Oc motioned to the wall. The arms slid around him and dug into the wall, bringing him up, up, up the wall, to rest on the ceiling. He glanced around, then motioned to another building, wanting to go as high as possible. The arms whisked him away by his command, keeping quiet but still making good time. Most people were asleep by now, but there was still the matter of caution.

The fact was, Octavius didn't want to return to his home. He didn't want to return to his kitchen, where he had talked with Rosie and Peter before that fateful accident, didn't want to go into his bedroom, that was still laced with the faintest traces of Rosie's perfumes and scents, her vanity table still untouched, his clothing mostly intact as well. Those halls were haunted with ghosts now, ghosts of the past. Of an old life that a fog was quickly obscuring. That place made him remember. Painful memories struck back at him when he went there, memories better left forgotten now.

So he climbed the buildings. Conversed with his arms. They climbed for him, and he came with them, lost in thought. Not in memory – he was never lost in memory anymore. The memory was lost within him, rather. His mind was blank, the chattering of the arms silent, until they finally stopped moving.

"Why have we stopped?" He asked, still a little out of it.

We are quite high.

Blinking, Otto shook his head. He finally glanced around, seeing nothing but sky and a spire.

The city skyline loomed in front of him. Not a building stood in his way, all of them below him. He glanced back to the tentacles, which all were tightly gripped to something behind him. He was being held on to the Empire State Building.

The view was extraordinary.

We knew you would appreciate it.

Octavius stared out into the horizon for a long time. It was a long, dark line at this point in time, the New York City Skyline. The sun had long set, making the sky a dark blue-black against the lit-up glory of the buildings.

Just like me.

Hn?

They tell me I am a freak for living with you...but yet, as I stare into the skyline, does everyone not live with some form, some subconscious artificial intelligence? Do they mean to tell me the skyline I stare at now is not alive in its own way?

Humans are afraid of sentience machinery because they fear it will evolve with superiority to them. We are not particularly surprised at this, but it is quite an idiotic fear in our opinion – they cannot even create something as good as themselves. And that which is better, cannot think without a human starting the process. A standard home computer can do only what it is programmed and commanded too.

One would wonder.

...not on purpose, anyway.

This last part was said with a bit of a mental smirk. Otto shrugged to himself and yawned, "What's to do tonight....saw Harry...Kat's asleep...ah yes, Kat! The hospital!"

Pardon?

"Kat's blood and various other incriminating evidence....I don't want her known as the person who helped me."

What is your implication?

"I want you to destroy that hospital room."

The arms were flying down and across the buildings before he could blink. Like making children race to see who gets the most candy, they scrambled down as fast as possible, flying from building to building. Otto tried to figure how much time it took them the first time verses the this time, and through all his calculations he figured that if he had dealt with the annoying Osborn for an hour or so, then he had been strolling merrily around for about a half-hour to fourty-five minutes. That would make the time about right now...

11:46 PM, to be exact.

My thanks.

So if it was 11: 45 now, then by the time he got to the hospital, then back to the apartment, he'd figure it would be about two-ish. If everything went well, it would be later. The Empire State Building was quite far away from the hospital, but at the speed they were going, it would take no time at all. He had to hold his coat closed to again avoid the bits of cement pelting his flesh, but was enjoying it besides that. He decided to himself that the arms were much, much easier to deal with if he let them cause them chaos on occasion rather then just run around the building.

The exact time that he arrived at the hospital was unimportant to Oc, so he didn't bother to ask. He recognized the building's siding and his arms reached out to grasp it about the tenth floor. Three of the tentacles landed with an unhappy CRASH, the fourth one (the one which had recently been fixed) had the unfortunate problem of not opening in the correct angle and instead of grabbing onto the wall, smacked off of it instead. It flailed several times, the tentacles' AI cursing in it's own strange way in the shared mind of the duo. The arm shook a little bit, then gripped another spot, correctly this time.

You are alright?

Fine.

Not quite believing but also not sure how to back it up, Ock tentacle walked into the now well-used ninth-floor shaft. He ordered the arms to press onto his body as he crab-walked on the bottom of the shaft, as the noise the arms made while moving would not exactly help him be secretive. He walked for a while, counting the steps and glancing down occasionally, before finally looking down to see a hospital room looking rather shambled. Kat hadn't done much to hurt the room, but his argument (arguably the worst he'd ever had) with the other mind that lived with him had torn the place apart. He peered around a bit more, noticing the hospital table and the blood on it – that would have to go. As would the scalpel...he noted that as well. The rest of it would simply have to be ransacked badly enough to cover her fingerprints and DNA. Parker, of course, wore that suit, so he wouldn't have to worry about the boy.

I assume you'd like it to destroy the room?

Must you ask such a ridiculous question? We think you know us well enough by now.

Then by all means......

Again, they needed no motivation besides that.

Otto dropped down from the vent and nodded. He closed his eyes – he didn't want to see this, and he was sure he'd hear it

"Ow...shit......"

Katarina Morrigan opened her eyes blearily.

SHATTER.

"Shit. That could NOT have been good. Oh, my fuckin' god. Otto is going to fuckin KILL me. I am so FUCKING SCREWED. What the HELL do I do now?" She stood up and rubbed her bum and her head, "Stupid blasted stairs." Glaring at them, she stood up and looked at the coffee table that had apparently walked itself to across from the steps. It had, very obviously, stopped her tumbling, crashing fall down the steps. It had also apparently held something, something made of glass, given the shards on the table.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god...oh my..fuckin' god...Otto is going to disembowel me when he sees this....I don't know what to do...well..first, let's clean this glass up, all I need is for him to come and cut his foot open..." she cursed to herself and used her shoe to scoop most of the glass under a nearby rub, picking up the largest pieces and putting them into a garbage can, thankfully that was nearby.

She'd been sleepingwalking. She had sleptwalk all the way to the stairs, then fallen down them. With the headache that she had now, she'd never get to sleep. So she decided to wander Oc's house instead.

She strolled into his kitchen and looked around with curiosity. The man had several different sets of china and many, many cups. Must have loved coffee... she thought to herself as she looked through all the different pictures on the mugs. One of them had a picture of Otto and a woman, smiling and hugging eachother.

"He looks happy in that picture..he's never..really looked that happy..." She said to no one in particular, feeling a bit sad, "I guess that was his wife..."

Tearing her eyes from the imprinted mug, she sat down at his table. It was a very nice table, actually, with a stained-glass design on it. She looked at the design and smiled – it was a man reaching out to grab the sun. Tracing her fingers over it for a while, she gazed at the beautiful golden and green glass, I bet he was really happy before he got all of this shit. She pondered, standing up again and turning from the kitchen.

She was assaulted by a row of books that surprised her. With curiosity she strolled over and looked at some of the bindings. Some of them she expected: Nuclear physics, fusion, advanced science, blah blah and that crap. Some of it, however, blew her away. Otto wouldn't read stuff by Henry David Thoreau or T.S. Elliot to save his life.

Again she shrugged, striding into the next room over. This bedroom, no doubt, that Octavius had been so vehement against her sleeping in. A vanity table an all sorts of feminine things was pressed against a wall and a mirror hung above, next to a closet and then a window. The bed was pressed against the next wall, a strange piece of art that she didn't' recognize hung above it. Next the bed was a bedside table, which held various things like glasses, a cell phone, a post-it note that read 'get eggs and fix chain', and an alarm clock that was off, and a man's watch. Two drawers were under it; she opened them both to find neatly pressed socks and boxers.

Shaking her head and grinning, Katarina closed the drawers and moved on to the next object. This was another dresser, thought it was taller. She pulled over a stool and stood on it, looking at the various things that rested on the top. Several pictures of Otto and that woman from before. She reached for one had a much younger looking version of him in an expensive tuxedo, the woman wearing a beautiful white wedding dress. Both were beaming at the camera. Kat looked down, noting that it carried an engraving on the bottom of the frame.

Otto Octavius and Rosalie Harris-Octavius – Married June 8th, 1986.

"So it's his wife...Rosalie..pretty name...." She set the picture frame down and looked at it again, "He looks...really happy in these pictures." She jumped off the stool and sat down on it, resting her chin in a palm and her elbow on her knee, the other hand absent-mindely playing with her hair.

She'd never really thought about Otto being happy. Octavius was never really 'happy' when she was around – sure, he smiled and laughed but somehow, it was fake. In these pictures, it was true. He'd loved this woman, that was for sure, and he had been happy.

He wasn't anymore, that was definite. She frowned, "Now all he does is frown and scowl..." Her expression became tinged with sadness itself, "And he has these bags under his eyes...." She picked up a picture from the top of the dresser and looked at it, "Not in any of these pictures, he doesn't....damn.....I kind of feel bad for him." She stood up and plced the picture back on the shelf, then put the stool back where it had come from. In a much more melancholy way, she left the dresser away and discovered more clothes in his closets and various science trinkets in his drawers. The bedroom now boring, she left, leaning in the doorway as she wondered where to go next.

The college girl wandered aimlessly back upstairs into the living room as she looked down at her backpack. She was bored, and THIS was clearly a bad thing. Unzipping the trusty Jansport, she pulled out a collection of CDs, headphones and a CD player. She hopped back down the stairs, avoiding the end and making a mental note to clean up the rest of the glass before Otto returned.

Her eyes wandered through her CDs, not quite sure which one to choose.