Call Me… Doc Ock – Arc One: Origin

Chapter 2: Work for Your Tools

With a grunt, I dropped the last bag of raked leaves next to the others by the garbage bins. Taking a moment to stretch, I let myself enjoy the pleasant breeze. It was late November and while it was getting cooler, it wasn't so cool that I didn't build up a sweat doing yardwork. With all that done, I went up to the front of the house and knocked on the front door. After a while, the door open and an older man in a sweater and cargo pants answered.

"Mr. Gordon, I've finished up with the yardwork and put everything away!"

Mr. Gordon looked me over for a bit. "Did ya now?" Looking over his yard, he found everything in place to his liking before nodding. "Right, well good work I guess," he said before pulling out his wallet and handing me two twenty-dollar bills.

"Thank you, sir."

"Yeah, yeah, off you get," he said before shutting the door.

With that, I went to my bike, unlocking it from metal fence around the yard. Taking a moment to stretch some more, I flipped a switch on a device in the middle of the handlebars. It was a homemade GPS that Isaac had worked on with Otto when he had first gotten the bike. There were several other features that we added, such as an anti-theft electric buzzer, a solar-powered light and a tracking device in case it was lost somehow. Looking at the map, I took a moment to see if there was anyone else on the map that had scheduled yardwork for the day. Seeing as there wasn't any, I decided to head to the local tool shop. As a ride my bike I went through a checklist of all the things that I needed for today. I was going to need a lot of wires, a lot of supplies for soldering and a few new batteries as well.

For all the jokes people made about Tony making a suit with a bunch of scraps, what most people didn't realize was that a lot of those scraps were leftovers from the unused and dismantled weapons that he had personally designed, after what was no doubt a lot of calculations and hours of work designing and building the weapons. Even then the armor didn't last long, and Tony barely escaped from that branch of the Ten Rings. Like Howard Stark said, we are limited by the technology available to us in our time.

This was true more so for me than either of those two, what with not being a billionaire with the kind of connections needed to make all that super tech. As such, I first needed to buy the tools that would help me make the tools that I would need to make the equipment for the oncoming shit storm.

Hence, the yardwork and odd jobs I did here and there like baby-sitting and tutoring. The most lucrative work I got was phone repair. With the advent of the cellphone, came numerous cases of people breaking said phones. My first customers had been a couple of guys doing ill-advised tricks on their bikes off the fences surrounding the nearby high school. When I heard moaning about the loss of their phones, I offered my services. Next, thing I know people across the city are calling and I have a steady supply of cash on hand for the foreseeable future.

Arriving at the store (named Handymen's Haven), I locked up my bike and headed inside. Giving a short wave to the cashier inside, I began browsing. The nice place about this store is that most of the stuff on sale was of decent quality for relatively cheap. It was also pretty quiet on Saturday morning, when there were few customers. Isaac had never really been much for crowds both before and after his parents' deaths and I wasn't much of a socializer in my previous life.

Grabbing some stuff here and there, I eventually made my way over to the cashier. The man raised an eyebrow at some of the stuff but didn't say anything about it. Shaking his head he ran up my purchases and gave me a small wave. That was something else I liked about this store. The people didn't really bother me about what I was buying. At other shops the retailers either treated me like I was an infant and kept babying or kept following me around. One guy in particular had been really irritating…

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the same worker from before, peeking from around the corner of the shelf. Honestly, I would probably not have noticed anything off. While I was pretty tall for my age, I was still a pre-teen at this point in time, so maybe he was just concerned about my safety. That had changed when I noticed that he ignored the two other kids slipping some matches into their coat pockets right behind him. Sighing in annoyance I spoke up. "So, are you going to do anything about that?" The store clerk blinked at that.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the two guys behind you trying to steal matches."

"Wait, what?!" As the store clerk turned around, the two teens in question bolted for the door. "HEY! HEY, WAIT! Aww dammit!" By the time the store clerk reached the door, the two teens had gotten on their bikes and rode off.

When came back into the store, I had already bought my stuff and walked out, giving him a wave as he passed by.

I hadn't really visited that store all that much since then. Especially after finding Handyman's Haven. Now I had a go to store that wasn't too far from where I lived. Speaking of, I arrived just before 9am. Taking my bike around the back I headed the back before going into the garage. I put my supplies in the locker, where I kept everything needed for my tools.

Once I made sure everything was locked up for latter. I went over to the gym room where Rudolph kept his weights. One thing that I appreciated about living with my aunt and uncle was that they were rather health conscious and kept a lot of exercise equipment in the house. One of the major issues that Otto had in most universes in his supervillain career was his lack of physical training. It often became a problem for him, especially whenever he got up close in personal with Spider-Man. While I didn't really plan to get into a fistfight if I could help it, I figured that working on my physical conditioning would be beneficial in the long run.

After doing several sets with Rudolph's weights, I got on to Janice's treadmill. As I ran, I turned on the tv setup in front of it to check the news. So far nothing noteworthy has really caught my attention. I would imagine that many of the really important stuff would require some extensive digging through government databases, which wasn't something I was really willing to risk. While I had some confidence in my hacking skills, I would need to make some serious upgrades to my computer if I wanted to avoid getting caught by the Alphabet Soup, or worse, S.H.E.I.L.D (H.Y.D.R.A). …eh, something for later then.

Just as I got finished running, I heard a voice calling out. "Isaac. Isaac! Are you home?"

And that would be my aunt Janice. She's usually out by now grocery shopping or at a weekend appointment, so something must have come up. Taking a moment to wipe some sweat off first, I headed into the living room. There I found Janice by the door looking at some letters.

"Aunt Janice, you called."

She jumped about. "Isaac, there you are… where were you?"

"I was doing some yardwork, shopping and exercising, like usual."

"Oh… right, um…" Janice trailed off for a bit. Things were still awkward for all of us. Like I said before, Rudolph and Janice had not really been close to my parents, but they had taken in Isaac, so I figured that they had to care somewhat. That said it still felt awkward to be around them. For the most part I kept to myself with either of the two checking up on me to make sure I was okay. I'm pretty sure things would have been more difficult for everyone involved if I hadn't woken up in Isaac.

Deciding to move things along I spoke up: "Do you need something?"

"Oh, right, right, right. You got some letters" she said handing me some envelopes.

Looking over them, most of them seemed to be responses from the colleges that I had applied to. I had no real concern there, as I am reasonably certain that a few of them were meant to inform me of my acceptance into their schools. Isaac, like Otto, was pretty damn smart and had already taken care of any requirements to be admitted.

What caught my attention were the two letters that were not from any schools. The first was from a law firm going by the name Landau, Luckman & Lake. If I recalled correctly, they dealt with property and holding rights. Suddenly feeling a surge of emotions, I opened it up.

"Isaac? Are you… are you okay?" Janice asked as took in my sudden shaking.

Taking several calming breaths, I read through the letter quickly before speaking up. "Yeah, I'm- I'm fine," I said. "It's just… it's about my parents; the holding company they hired, has asked me about setting a date to check up on my parents' things."

Janice flinched at that. Even now after a few months, my parents had been a… difficult topic. Neither Rudolph nor Janice had been willing to talk about it. Suddenly looking uncomfortable, Janice tried broaching the topic; "are you… are you okay?"

Honestly, I wasn't really sure if I was. Thinking about Otto and Pascale still hurt a lot. It would probably take a while before I could even think about them without feeling the urge to cry. I took a deep breath, before responding.

"I'm… not okay, but… I'll be fine." That was the only thing I could be sure about.

"Um, so… what about the other letter," Janice asked, looking to change the topic.

More grateful for the change in topic than I could put into words, I read the other letter. "It's from the New York Hall of Science. They're sending me an early invitation for the annual science fair." This… this was good. This was as good a chance as any to get my name out there. I needed resources and getting a position that paid well early on would help a lot.

"Oh, that's good." Aunt Janice relaxes, then her brow furrows. "When does that happen?"

"Registration ends in February, the actual fair happens in March, in Queens, New York," I answered absently.

"Do you need me or Rudolph to take you?"

I actually took a moment to think about that for a moment. While I was sure that I could arrange for a ride, it would probably be easier if one of them took me. Looking at the letter from LL&L, I considered that maybe I could deal with my parents' estate as well.

"Actually, would it be alright if one of you could come along with me to deal with this as well," I asked holding up the letter from LL&L. "That way we don't have to make too many trips."

"…alright. Yeah, that works." Janice nodded. "I'm going to go now. I have some things to take care of, Rudolph has already headed out for the day, he should be back by 5. I have some leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry. Bye"

"Bye," I waved after her as she left. I headed to my room on the first floor. It had originally been a guest room but had quickly been converted for my use. Once, I put the letters away to look over them more carefully later, I headed to basement. Rudolph and Janice had mostly used it for storing things and didn't come down much except to clean things up, which made it perfect for converting it into a makeshift starter lab. As I turned on the main lights several screens and lamps came on illuminating a bunch of tables with scraps and electronics. Three tables in particular had my main focus.

On the first table, was the first project I was working on to power my equipment: A solar battery It had taken a lot of studying on my part, but I had eventually come up with a design that I could hopefully use and sell in the future. It was no Arc-Reactor, but it was my hope that with time it could actually compete with anything that Stark could produce. I had gone through several designs to make something that would work.

For the sake of safety and privacy I usually worked on constructing these batteries when I was sure that Janice and Rudolph were not around. I then took them out to a deserted area of the nearby park to make sure that they worked. For the most part most of them didn't really store up much energy fast enough to be worth any. The second to last design I had, on the other hand, built up too much energy to be contained safely and blew up before I could shut it off… I really hope no one made any connection to me and that scorch mark in the statue of the park's founder. Shaking my head, I dropped that train of thought and focused on my latest design. This one showed a lot of promise. It came in the form of a small crystal in the shape of an octahedron within a transparent tube sealed off on both sides with metal caps. The caps themselves had metal prongs for both keeping the solar-cell locked in place and transferring collected energy. I had mostly based the design on the chaos-drive from Sonic Adventure 2, one of my favorite video games of all time. …hopefully I don't get any crap from SEGA for that.

Shrugging my shoulders, I put on a face-protector before leaning in to take a better look at the solar-cell up close. The solar-cell gave off a greenish-white glow as evidence of being at full power. I had designed it so that if it was at full power, it would shine greenish-white. At medium power it would start to turn yellow, and finally at low power it would turn red. It had taken a lot of trial and error to get that effect, and had left me with a few duds, but I was honestly proud of the progress I had made so far.

Looking over the monitors I made to determine its energy output, I found that everything seemed to work well so far. Right now, I just wanted to make sure that would work properly in my electronic equipment. I would work on making a design that would not break in case it took a hit from one of Marvel's heavy hitters some other time.

Moving on from there I went to the second table. On this table, was a robot that I had been working on for a variety of purposes. Right now, what I wanted to do with it was make it into an automated sparring partner. As I said before, I needed to be ready in case I got into a fistfight. As such I needed to practice working on my hand to hand moves and weapons training. As such I took the liberty of getting the latest version of Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive, Bushido Blade and Soul Calibur to download the many forms of martial arts into the robot. So far, the robot had a basic chassis with padding. Underneath the padding, there were sensors meant to serve as a sort of crude nervous system to let the robot know when it got hit. It had a set of lenses to serve as eyes receivers on each side to serve as ears.

I had just finished building it the other day and was still downloading the disks' data into it. From what I could see, the process was just about done so I could get it to work soon. I was really looking forward to putting this little guy through its pace. Next to that was a suit with padding and sensors for me to put on. Testing the sensitivity of the sensors, I found that everything seemed to be in working order.

Finally, I walked over to the third table. Here on this table was the one project that I had really been excited about. In a container was a pool of liquid material through which a gray cloud could be seen drifting around in a circular pattern. Taking out a syringe, I flipped a switch on it which activated a weak electrical charge. Removing the cap on the container, I inserted the syringe into the liquid and extracted the gray cloud and a bit of the liquid. Next to the container was the closest I could get to an actual human body in the form of a fake body, it was made to simulate the human body as closely as possible. Taking a moment to check the screen that had been hooked up to the body, I checked to make sure that the sensors were working properly. I then plunged the needle into a vein of the fake body and emptied the syringe and sealing it up. I then flipped a switch on the computer which set off a weak charge to make the fake blood in the machine flow through the body. Immediately after, on a screen next to the container of liquid I could see information broadcasting from the grey matter as it moved through the fake body. I allowed myself a grin.

Nanomachines, one of the major staples in any work of science fiction. For me this was going to be one of the many foundations of my work. It was my hope that I could get the jump out and make a name for myself using them for various fields of science. Just making this cluster had taken up practically most of my time, but oh boy was it going to be worth it. As of right now, it wasn't too fancy, at least by Marvel Comic's standards or the later MCU's standards. After a lot of trial and error, what I could get the cluster to do was monitor and map out the fake body. Now though there was one other test that I felt they were ready for.

Reaching into a nearby drawer, I pulled out a bottle and a knife. Laying the body down, I opened up the body's mouth and poured in the material and watched as the liquid mixture made its way to the stomach and was slowly processed in an imitation of digestion. Taking the knife, I stabbed the knife into the body, once at the upper right bicep just below the shoulder, a second time near the into the left shin, and finally slightly left to the thoracic cavity between the third and fourth rib bones. After a few seconds, much to my joy, the cluster of nanites began to move to where I cut into the fake body and, drawing from the liquid mixture, began to repair the damage I had done, starting with the wound in its chest, then the arm and finally the leg. Holding my breath, I lightly poked at where I had originally stabbed into the body. When there had been no sign of injury, I let out my breath before jumping and shouting for joy.

"YES! YES! YES! YES! YEESSSS!" I couldn't contain myself. After all the work I had put into this project over the months, this was a major breakthrough! Taking a moment to relax and bask in the success of this test run, I thought of the directions I could go with my nanomachines. After I was sure that the liquid mixture was all used up in repairing the body, I turned off the current running through the body. Once it was off, I picked up the syringe, flipped on the switch and used it to extract the cluster of nanomachines. Refilling the container from before I then released the cloud of nanomachines into the container and sealed it tightly. On the screen more data began to flow as the nanomachines began to feed the computer more data at a faster rate.

When no more information came forth, I carefully put everything away and headed back to the home gym and went to the open space where Janice usually practiced her aerobics. Turning on the nearby radio, I played the tape with the music that I used to practice my forms with. As the music washed over me, I moved.

Everything seemed to be going good for me at the moment, here's hoping that it would last a little while longer.