Standard Disclaimer: I own nothing in regards to Harry Potter or Marvel. All properties therein are those of their creators. I am only a writer working on my skills with worlds and characters that I love.
Note: Recently watched the Spiderverse movies and I couldn't not use Olivia Octavius after that. She's just too fun.
Chapter Nine - Gathering The Components
"This is… ambitious." Perenelle commented as she examined the plans laid out before her on the lab's main desk. It had been nearly a year since she'd begun her role as Harry's tutor and things were going great. The child was incredibly smart, inquisitive, and committed. Honestly she wished even a fourth of her former students had his work ethic. Certainly her husband's last student Albus had been lazy as hell.
Nicholas had been just as dedicated to training Illyana in her own abilities and Laura had fallen in love with the temple martial arts. The clone seemed to find peace with the precise and fluid movements. Piotr, as always, had stuck by his prince's side throughout it all and was even now leaned against the far wall where his eyes could take in everything around them at once. He didn't speak much but his gaze was constant.
Right now though, Harry had finally given her the reason he'd wanted to undertake an education in alchemy in the first place. "I know it is a lot," Harry agreed, "but I want to create the best result I can, which means combining the best of everything. I don't need to make one thing into another, I need to be able to bind many things to each and make them stronger for it."
On the pages before her were detailed plans for a suit of armor. One unlike any she'd seen before. The itemized list of ingredients and pieces he wanted to use though… "Even if we could make these things bond together, the final product would not be as adaptable as you describe. And many of these materials are nearly impossible to procure."
Harry smirked at that comment. "I wouldn't be so sure. I've been looking through the multi-viewer for some time now and I've found something that will make the entire suit possible. Also, my dad has already figured out the best ways to get what we need."
New York
Octavius Industries
Olivia Octavius was having a bad day. Yet another of her sworn investors had been drawn away by threats from Oscorp and she'd had to sell another of her patents to keep the lights on another month. Damn that Norman Osborne. They'd been the best of friends in school, lab partners, free thinkers, visionaries even, and had eventually decided to open Oscorp together. But then things had gone to hell. Norman had been seduced by the money and the status, and had begun delving more heavily into genetics, leaving the molecular physics and engineering behind where she continued to work on it alone. In time he had become a shadow of himself, a man that Olivia could not even recognize. His shady practices combined with an increasingly entitled attitude and very heavy handed pick-up attempts toward her had led Olivia to leave the company and attempt start her own. However Norman was nothing if not a sore loser and he had made it his mission to destroy her new venture ever since.
The scientist was just trying to decide on which of her projects to prioritize in the time she had left when she opened her office door and nearly spilled her coffee all over herself in shock. Standing before her desk was a very tall man in a masked suit of armor and a hooded green cloak. At once she pressed the alarm key on her bracelet but nothing happened.
"I've nullified all signals from this room, Doctor Octacius." The stranger spoke easily with a heavily defined eastern european accent. "But do not fear, I am not here to cause you harm. Quite the opposite in fact."
"Who are you?" Olivia demanded, at once activating her latest invention with a thought to make four malleable metal arms reminiscent of an octopus sprout from the rig on her back and move to aim menacingly at her intruder. To her further shock, the man merely chuckled at the sight.
"You are just as my son said you'd be. I am impressed. My name is Doctor Doom, and I am the king of Latveria. I have been made aware of the situation you currently find yourself in and I am in a position to aid you for a price."
The metal arms pulled back a bit, but remained at the ready for the slightest move. Olivia was… intrigued by the circumstances she now found herself in. There was not a scientist at her level in the world who did not know about the incredible scientific achievements of Victor Von Doom. "I'm listening."
"I must say, when my son informed me of the nature of your work I was quite impressed. Your research and engineering progress toward full human-prosthetic merging has been nothing short of astounding to read about. And based off of those tentacles, I'd say you've already perfected your neural interface."
"Yes and no." Olivia admitted readily enough. "This is merely a prototype, though it is working to the specifications I designed it for. I've lacked the funding to create a final product. The materials needed and equipment are simply too expensive and Oscorp has been cornering the market for all the available supply."
"Yes, I've noticed that." Doom drummed a gauntleted finger against his elbow for a few moments and said, "What would it take to convince you to move your entire company to Latveria?"
"Excuse me?" Asked an absolutely floored Olivia. She'd assumed he'd want to 'acquire' one of her patents, not her whole company.
As if he could see the thoughts swirling in her mind he elaborated. "I do not intend to steal this company which you have worked so hard to build. Rather, I wish to offer you a new base of operations, complete funding via my government, and a complete redaction of those pesky human-rights testing laws. You have marvelous creations, and I want to see them come to fruition."
"While also getting access to them first." Olivia guessed.
"Indeed."
"Will you help me sue the shit out of Norman Osborne?
"Gladly."
"Then I'm your girl. Out of curiosity, is there a creation of mine in particular that has caught your interest?"
Doom nodded. "My son has become quite enamored with your neural link controllers and nano-wire nervous system connectors."
"Really? Well I happen to have a few ready to go. Would you like to observe them before I start packing up to move to Latveria?"
"I would indeed."
Madagascar
Ulysses Klaw downed another drink from his third shot glass of the night and smiled out at the sight that greeted him. He'd set himself up on the veranda of a nature preserve to enjoy his alcohol and the sights of all these endangered species to the fullest. Yes he could have gone out for an evening hunt, but he was on vacation now and he mostly wanted to just relax and be lazy. It had been a busy year after all. Mercenaries like him were always in demand and he'd recently come into a certain stockpile of rare items that people all over the world would kill to own.
He was just considering waving down the waitress to ask for another round when a pillar of light erupted into being ahead of him and out walked a tall man in a suit of armor and a green cloak. Klaw would be a pretty poor soldier of fortune if he didn't recognize a world leader.
"Doctor Doom, this is a surprise."
"For you, I am sure." Doom crossed his arms and stared the scum down. "You have in your possession a stockpile of vibranium tools and relics. I wish to purchase them from you."
"I already have buyers lined up."
"I'll pay more."
The Pit - SHIELD Storage Site For Enhanced Materials
Victor nearly hummed as he strolled right down the undefended halls of the subterranean structure that currently surrounded him. He used magic so often that every now and then it was nice to simply fall back on her mechanical genius to prove he still had it in spades. Turns out, he did. This entire facility relied on motion sensors, cameras, and automatic defenses. It was so secret that the sheer majority of people working in the regular military base above ground didn't even know this place was beneath their feet. As such, there were no living bodies to take note of him and his supreme hacking skills had already made him invisible to the cameras, motion and heat sensors, and automated defenses. Effectively, he was a ghost.
So it was that one of the most dangerous men alive walked into one of the most secure vaults in the world, and strolled out with a large slab of one of the most valuable and rare metals in existence. "I wonder what Harry plans to do with this adamantium?"
San Francisco - Life Foundation
Carlton Drake was on cloud nine as he strutted down the walk from the parking garage to the front door of his California office and research station. It had taken two nights to make it here from the other side of the world and he was practically bouncing with excitement. Yes, some no name unfortunates had died in Malaysia, and yes a few of his private security force had been terminated in the course of capturing their extraterrestrial visitors, but now the Symbiotes were officially locked in the basement of his lab just waiting for him to examine them and eventually join with them so he could bring about the future of the human race. It was all going according to plan.
As he reached the front door he honestly felt like whistling as he grabbed his ID card and waved it at the reader. Only the shocking pain of his shoulder colliding against the oddly stationary security door finally clued him in to the fact that something was wrong. Suddenly frantic he attempted four more times to get his card to let him in and when that failed to work he started hammering at the reinforced glass of the viewing window. Curse his foresight of securing the facility for all of his less than legal experiments.
It took longer than he would have liked for someone to finally realize their boss was locked outside, but eventually the woman at the front desk noticed him and called a security guard to let him in; or so he thought.
The door opened and a stern voice declared, "I'm sorry, sir, but this branch has been closed to the public." The guard was one he didn't recognize, and he seemed far too well armed to be one of the usual crowd.
"Yes, I know, I gave the order to lock down the facility." Carlton growled. "Look, there's a problem with the card reader. It won't let me in."
"And who are you?"
Drake blinked owlishly at the man before him. "Are you serious? I'm Carlton Drake, I own this fucking company!"
"Oh!" The guard's eyes opened with sudden recognition.
"Yeah." The 'environmentalist' made to brush past his organic obstruction only to be pushed bodily back out into the street.
"You're the old owner." The guard set him straight. "Last night the board of the Life Foundation accepted a full buyout. This building, all the other offices, and all the materials held therein are now the property of Valerian Dreams Incorporated."
"What the hell is Valerian Dreams Incorporated?" Carlton demanded.
"Can't say as I know. That's just the name we were briefed on this morning. We were also directed to keep anyone and everyone, you especially, from entering this building."
"I never authorized a buyout."
"The board voted without you. Unanimously. Word passing through the cracks was that they were all pretty pissed about how you've been ignoring every aspect of revenue except the space based research for the last two years."
"There are important materials of mine that I need to retrieve."
"Everything from the labs was shipped out last night around midnight. It's someone else's material now." When all Drake did in response to that statement was stare stupidly into space and fall to his knees in shock, the guard shut the door again and moved off back to his post, shrugging humorously to the front desk woman as he did. Some people just seemed to have bad grasps on reality.
The Wilds of Canada
Logan, the famed Wolverine, was having a slow day. Yet even on slow days of chopping wood to feed the stove in his mountainside cabin the view over the Canadian wilderness was breathtaking. He didn't live here year round, but every now and then he found himself needing a break from Xavier's holier than thou mutant equality, be the better men, rhetoric. Seriously, every time he had to kill someone on a mission the bald educator laid into him with intense lectures about the value of all human life as if he were one of the children under his care. With the way the bald man spoke to him as if he were young, dumb, and unaware of the consequences of his own actions it seemed as if he kept forgetting that Logan was almost ten times older than he was. Which was one of the reasons that he didn't really take the educator's dreams seriously. He'd been around long enough to see these types of conflicts come and go, and he knew the odds of humans and mutants getting all chummy around a campfire singing kumbaya were fatally unrealistic. But Charles was an idealist so he refused to even consider his arguments in that regard.
Honestly there were times he'd considered joining up with Magneto and his Brotherhood just so his methods wouldn't be ridiculed so much, but the former Weapon X hated the idea of working with someone that could control his body with the wave of a hand.
He was just getting ready to start chopping down another tree when a new scent reached his nostrils. At once he shot around and launched his ax toward his cabin, only to nod as it suddenly ceased its motion in midair. He'd known he'd smelled magic.
A moment later the air shimmered ahead of the stationary weapon to reveal a form he knew well from the professor's daily briefings. "The hell you want, Doom?"
"Your senses and instincts are indeed as good as advertised." The king praised evenly. "Seeing as you so 'directly' asked, I am here to offer you a job."
"I already have one."
"Ah, yes, training that prepubescent and teenage team of equality fighters in New York in hand to hand combat. I am aware of that prior commitment and am willing to pay you double what Xavier is."
The Wolverine blinked. For all his faults Xavier wasn't exactly a scrimpy spender. Double what he was already getting was incredibly tempting. That being said, without him those kids would be absolutely hopeless in the field. Scott was coming along alright as a leader, but he was far from ready to take command yet. And the others hadn't yet learned enough to operate on their own.
"It ain't just the money, bub. I got other commitments in that school."
Doom sighed, reached into his cloak, and tossed a small object at the mutant. The ruler saw the moment his eyes widened with recognition and shock, and he knew that he'd gained the upper hand. What the shorter man was seeing was a hard framed photograph of Laura in her Weapon X attire, hand and feet blades extended and at the ready. He'd had Mystique take it when she retrieved the girl from the facility that created her.
"What is this?" Logan growled.
"Exactly what it looks like. Your daughter, or perhaps you would prefer the term clone? She and my son are the job. You see they are training in a remote location and wish for the best in weapons instruction. My son has just created a blade of his own and Laura needs training in the best use of her claws and instincts. My contacts in Japan say you are the best wielder of the sword they have ever seen."
Wolverine huffed fondly as he recalled his many trips to the east. He'd found a measure of peace and harmony in Japan that he'd never known since. If the travel time weren't so damned long he'd likely have built his getaway cabin there instead of Canada.
The problem he now found himself with was, if that girl really was his clone, then she was pack, she was family, just as the wolves that had adopted him in these same wilds all those years ago were. He simply could not abandon her now without knowing she was capable of surviving. That being said… "Whether or not that is true, the fact remains that Xavier's kids would die without me."
Victor considered that for a moment and breathed out through his teeth to keep himself level. "I would be willing to arrange mystic gateways to allow you to easily travel between the monastery and Xavier's school."
Wolverine considered that for a moment and finally grunted his consent. "That should work. But I get paid in advance."
"Done. How long will you need to prepare?"
"Give me an hour to lock this place back down and pack my things and then I'll be ready to go."
"Excellent."
Later That Night
Harry, Laura, Illyana, Nicholas, and Perenelle were gathered in the Monastery's great hall when the latest gateway opened up to reveal Doctor Doom and a short man with mutton chops and a feral look in his eyes. At once Laura was on edge and she jumped in front of Harry with her claws extended.
To their mutual surprise, the stranger laughed at the sight. "Yeah, that would be her response." Then he slowly moved until he was standing right in front of her and breathed deeply, inhaling her scent. At once Laura found herself doing the same for reasons she could not understand.
Then her eyes lit up and she declared, "You smell like me!"
"Hell yeah I do." He nodded before raising a fist and extending his own claws. "I'm here to teach you how to use these." Logan's eyes moved to the large sword on the prince's hip, "And I'm also here to teach you to use that."
"My thanks." Harry nodded his head before looking at his father once more. "Is he why you wanted us to gather here, dad?"
"Partially." Doom acknowledged before reaching into his coak and pulling out a few of the items his son had requested. "But mainly I wanted to drop these off so you could make use of them. Where do you want it all?"
