For the next week, not much changed at the Utonium Laboratory. The professor had allowed Octavius to live there for a while, at least until they figured out how to solve his tentacle problem.
Peter had been testing alternative ingredients for his web fluid. With any luck, he hoped to either increase their strength or make them more versatile in some way.
He thought back to his fight against Octavius. There was so much he probably could have done with his webbing that he hadn't thought of that day.
If his web shooters had a wider nozzle setting, he could have just cocooned Octavius in a prison of webbing. Hell, even with the default webline setting, he could have easily just tied him up with weblines, like a crook caught in a rope in a children's show.
Regardless, nobody had died that day, and the eight-limbed scientist had been stopped. He was staying at the lab too, to boot. Peter didn't like this idea, but Utonium had made his position on the matter clear. There was nothing Peter could reasonably do to sway his opinion.
With a ding, the centrifuge Peter had been using had completed its job. This particular centrifuge was advanced enough to automatically separate the individual liquids inside the test tube for the user.
Peter took the vial containing a white chemical that had been separated from a yellow liquid. He then poured its contents into a beaker on the bench, watching as it reacted with the blue liquid.
It bubbled and foamed, nearly overflowing the container, before settling and turning a milky white. Peter punctured the surface of the liquid with a rod and stirred the mixture, ensuring it was consistent and had completely reacted.
As he stirred, the top layer of the liquid began to drag on the rod, solidifying through its exposure to open air. His experiment had succeeded, though it wasn't clear if the properties were significantly different to that of his normal web fluid.
Peter heard footsteps from the hallway. Heavy footfalls. Way too heavy for any of the girls or Ken. The sounds didn't match professor Utonium's shoes, either. That left one person–Octavius.
Otto seemed to be headed towards the kitchen, so Peter–who hadn't had anything to eat in hours–decided to follow the man, temporarily abandoning his experiment. Sure enough, he soon saw Otto enter the kitchen, and shortly afterwards entered behind him.
Rain splattered against the glass wall, distorting the view of the city around them.
"Mr. Parker," the older man greeted him once he noticed his presence.
"Dr. Octavius." Peter reciprocated the greeting, but he wasn't particularly jovial when doing so. "How are you feeling?"
"Little has changed. All we seem to have discovered is that the arms are fused directly into my nervous system."
Peter knew this, of course. He had made sure to read all of Utonium's written reports on his condition, just to check to see if he was exhibiting any suspicious behaviour.
A chime sounded through the room, originating at the automated meal preparation system to Peter's left. Octavius lifted his weight off of the island countertop and sauntered towards the built-in appliance-machine. He opened its sliding door and lifted the plate from inside.
On the plate was a medium-sized serving of vegetable lasagna, alongside a small side of vegetables. It was one of the better meal arrangements Peter had seen the machine dispense, though he wasn't too keen on having it today.
"Peter," Octavius began, sliding his plate onto the countertop as he sat down. "I know you're not the biggest fan of me staying here."
Peter feigned indifference towards the older man, punching a setting into the synthesiser.
"You're probably worried I'll go on another rampage or something." Otto sighed, beginning to separate his lasagna into smaller pieces. "I don't blame you–even I'm worried about going crazy again."
Peter glanced towards the troubled scientist. His face was stricken with guilt and his hands shook. Otto was on the verge of breaking down.
"There were nine major injuries that day." His eyes were shut tight, and tears began to well towards his nose. "Thank heavens nobody died… I don't know what I would do with myself if I had killed someone."
Peter frowned. The news report the night of the incident had been especially disheartening. Peter needed to do a better job at keeping civilians out of danger next time he fought someone.
"I can't imagine how that must feel," Peter finally responded, temporarily forgetting his pursuit of food.
"And it's all my fault."
Peter wasn't about to refute the man's claim, but he did feel sorry for him. Having to deal with the weight of three deaths on your shoulders couldn't have been easy.
"But that monster that went on a rampage? That wasn't me. I want you to know that."
Peter finally finished setting the synthesiser and listened to its idle hum as it fired up.
"So you can hate me for what happened. You have every right to. But just know that I never wished for any of this to happen."
Peter sighed. Otto had willingly put himself in a vulnerable emotional state just to get Peter to open up to him. He couldn't just ignore that. After a few moments, Peter decided to respond.
"Alright. I'll… quit giving you a hard time."
"Thank you, Peter," Octavius choked out, his expression slowly beginning to stabilise.
"But do you mind if I ask what happened?"
"Do you mean the lab accident? Or are you talking about…" Otto trailed off, picking at his food with his knife and fork.
Peter pondered the question for a second. "Could you tell me about both? It might help me get to know you better."
"Alright, that's fine. It all started when I finally received a shipment of Chemical X. It had been two months late, probably because it was being imported from mines in New Zealand..."
The synthesiser beeped once again, indicating Peter's meal had been completed. As he opened the hatch to access his meal, the scent of Spaghetti sauce filled his nostrils.
"If professor Utonium had already stabilised Chemical X into Chemical Z, why were you still working with the unstable version?"
"I very well would be! That is, if someone actually published their work!" Octavius scoffed, his previous woes seemingly forgotten for the time being.
"Oh, sorry. I didn't know." Peter wasn't exactly surprised to hear it, though. The reason Utonium probably didn't publish the work was to keep the source of the Powerpuff Girls Z's powers secret.
"Continuing where I left off," Otto took a sip from his glass of water. "I figured there was a reason he hadn't published anything. My main theory was that Chemical X lost all its unique properties once stabilised."
"So you were trying to work past the instability to utilise its ionising properties, right?" Peter had been allowed to study some of the professor and Ken's research into Chemical X and Z.
"Exactly. So I was working behind a radiation shield, standard procedure for unstable substances, stimulating the chemical with an electrode. But Chemical X reacted… unexpectedly."
Peter wasn't sure exactly what the doctor was hoping to learn by electrocuting the chemical, but he could imagine many ways the experiment would go wrong.
"It started heating up at an alarming rate. Melted right through the radiation shield and splattered onto the electronics of my mechanical arms." Two of his arms rose from their resting position, seemingly involuntarily, as if to signal that they had been involved.
"And that caused your body to rapidly mutate around the electronics, fusing the arms to your body."
"I can see why Utonium offered you that internship. You're right, that's exactly what happened." Otto's lasagna had cooled to a level safe for consumption, so he began eating his meal.
Peter was more interested in the part of the story that came next, but he knew better than to just ask for details outright. Otto had said he would share, so he would wait patiently until he did.
He picked up his fork and twirling some spaghetti around it. The synthesiser was pretty good at cooking, so he began to come up with possible ways it could have been created while waiting on Otto.
"On that morning… it was like something came over me. The mechanical arms started moving on their own, and my body seemed to be going along with it. I was trapped inside my own mind."
So it was as if he was sleepwalking? Peter found it hard to believe that a man as educated as Octavius would intentionally rampage through the city, so his explanation made sense to him.
"Do you think it's possible that someone was controlling your body?" Peter asked between mouthfuls of pasta. "With the world as crazy as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if someone found out about what happened to you and took advantage of the situation."
"Well I certainly wasn't in control, so I do suppose that is a possibility."
Silence fell between the two as they continued eating their dinner. Peter pondered Octavius' situation as he ate, but he didn't come to any new theories on what could have happened. It was either a type of sleepwalking, someone controlling his body, or Octavius simply wanting to cause trouble.
The kitchen door slid open, revealing Ken, the boy genius. He froze upon seeing the two together in the room, before quickly turning to leave. Before he could, however, he was shoved into the room by an onyx haired high schooler.
"Oi, quit stopping in my way!" Kaoru Matsubara clearly was not in a good mood right now. It probably had something to do with their fight against Mojo Jojo earlier today. One of his fuel canisters had burst and caused her and Momoko to be soaked in jet fuel.
It hadn't ended up being a problem for the rest of the fight, though they did have to avoid using their jet boots, lest they wanted to be burnt to a crisp.
Utonium mentioned something about the girls' powers protecting them from most of the harmful effects of exposure to the fuel, but he had specifically mentioned that they couldn't detransform before they had been completely cleaned.
Apparently it wasn't the first time something like this had happened, and there was an entire room in the lab dedicated to decontamination and cleaning just for situations like this. The only problem is that they had to stand in the room for a half hour while machines used lasers to blast the fuel off them.
And there isn't exactly much to do in a decontamination room. That is, except talk to someone else who was being decontaminated. And that someone happened to be the one person nobody wanted to listen to for more than five minutes–Momoko.
Needless to say, Kaoru was grumpy. And her presence in the kitchen likely indicated she was hungry, too. She huffed while roughly punching some options into the synthesiser while Peter tried to make himself as invisible as possible.
He didn't know Kaoru that well, and it wasn't impossible that she was the type to yell at anyone who dared to breathe the wrong way around her while she's in a bad mood. She had already displayed her short fuse with Ken.
Ken sat next to Octavius, occasionally sneaking glances towards his mechanical arms.
A plate of fried bacon and eggs slammed down onto the table beside Peter, causing him to jump.
"Got a problem, Poindexter?" Kaoru began, flopping crudely onto one of the counter stools. She sat for a second, before groaning and standing back up. It seemed she had forgotten her cutlery.
The door slid open once more, allowing Utonium into the room. Not far behind him was Miyako, who seemed to be in a perpetually optimistic state. The perfect opposite of how Kaoru was at the moment.
"Hi Peter!" Miyako greeted him as she entered the kitchen.
"Hey, Miyako." Peter's response was slightly lacking in enthusiasm, at least when compared to the blonde's.
The small kitchen had begun to feel rather cramped. Six people were all crammed into the space, and Peter wouldn't be surprised if a seventh were to join them in a few moments.
Right on cue, Momoko hopped through the doorway. She didn't seem nearly as sour as Kaoru was, probably because she didn't hate listening to the sound of her own voice, as she hummed a tune from an anime he had seen her watching a few times before. It had a really long title, so he couldn't recall its name. Something about failed knights?
Peter began to eat slightly faster. The last thing he wanted was for Momoko to say something that ticked off Kaoru while he was still sitting there.
Momoko gasped, which Peter presumed was because she would have to wait for Miyako, Utonium, and Ken to get their food before she could.
"Can't you put a second one of those fancy microwaves in here?" Momoko asked, taking a seat on the counter. The seat she chose was intentionally the farthest away from Otto's. "The lab's starting to get a little busy."
The 'fancy microwave' beeped, indicating Ken's meal had been completed. He opened the machine only to be met with a facefull of steam. Behind the plume sat a serving of steamed dumplings, stuffed with some kind of filling Peter wasn't familiar with.
"Sorry Momoko," Utonium responded, beginning to enter his desired meal into the machine. "But I'm afraid a second device wouldn't be able to fit anywhere in the kitchen. You see, the room beneath this one is dedicated entirely to preparing the meals that this machine spits out."
So that's how it worked. Peter was glad to know that one.
"And to be honest, it's just too expensive." Ken joined the discussion. "No matter how many meals we get it to produce, we will never recoup our production costs for just this model, let alone a second one."
"Cheer up, Momoko," Miyako consoled the redhead, handing her a small piece of candy from her purse. "It won't take that long. Just be patient."
"Does everything come back to candy with Momoko?" Peter probed, taking a break from his nearly complete pasta dish.
"Pretty much," Kaoru growled, stabbing at a strip of bacon with her fork. "She's always been like this. She needs to grow up."
"Hey!" Momoko called back, crossing her arms. "Not everything I do revolves around candy…"
"Oh yeah, she used to be really into this kids show character. What was his name again?" Kaoru was clearly trying to rile the girl up a little.
"There's nothing wrong with liking a TV character a little!" Momoko had clearly intentionally substituted 'TV' for 'kids show' in her rebuttal, but she hadn't denied it.
Before Kaoru could argue back, Octavius spoke up for the first time in a while.
"Utonium, you said these girls are your assistants, right?"
"Right. Why do you ask?"
"Well they don't seem to be helping out with-" Otto's voice cut out mid-sentence, his body seizing up.
Everyone was immediately on alert. This was the first major behavioural abnormality the doctor had displayed since he was brought here by the girls.
"Doctor Octavius?" Peter asked, standing from his chair and approaching the man. But as he got close, his danger sense screamed at him to move.
Peter dove to the side, narrowly avoiding one of Octavius' mechanical arms. But in avoiding the attack, professor Utonium was put in the line of danger.
The older man had the wind knocked out of him as the claw collided with his chest. The impact sent him careening out of the kitchen and back into the main living area.
"Professor!" Ken had ducked behind the counter, attempting to stay out of harm's way, but he revealed himself out of concern for his father.
Momoko, the closest of the girls to the door, had quickly rushed after Utonium. Peter could only presume it was because she needed a place to transform without revealing her secret identity.
Miyako and Kaoru attempted to follow her, but a sweep of another one of Otto's mechanical arms knocked them off balance and back into the kitchen.
Peter cursed silently. His prototype costume was on the other end of the lab, halfway deconstructed and undergoing maintenance. All he had with him was his mask, and while that would protect his identity, it wouldn't do much else.
Peter's top priority right now was to get Otto's attention off the girls so they could transform. Then he would be able to get his gear.
"Octavius!" Peter called, watching as the man lifted himself up into the air on his arms. His eyes were glazed over, just like they had been the last time they fought. "This isn't you! Come back to your senses!"
Peter's Z-Sense blared once more, but he ignored its warning. He allowed another one of Otto's arms to slam into his body, flinging him backwards out of the kitchen. His shoulder clipped the doorframe on his way out, altering his trajectory slightly.
Peter tumbled to a stop a few metres shy from where Utonium had landed. The professor groaned on the ground, curling up into a ball to protect his injured chest and stomach.
Peter turned to face Octavius as he approached the two. But it wasn't the doctor he was looking at. Peter was looking at the redheaded Powerpuff Girl rocketing towards him. She swung her yo-yo at an extraordinary speed, easily enough to kill a person if she wasn't careful.
As she drew near, she whipped her yo-yo arm around, clocking Octavius in the lower back with it.
Octavius' arms were sent into a frenzy, trying to both account for the sudden change in velocity and also in an attempt to retaliate against his attacker.
The doctor's body only barely scraped the smooth tiled floor before his arms managed to lift him back into the air. He now faced the self-proclaimed leader of the Powerpuff Girls Z, and he snarled animalistically.
Peter began to lift himself onto his feet. His shoulder twitched in pain and his chest ached, but he was otherwise alright.
One of Otto's four mechanical limbs took the initiative to practise forward defence against Blossom, accelerating towards her with great speed.
Peter watched on as the candy obsessed teenage girl parried each of the strikes the arm attempted to land on her. She didn't seem to be going on the offensive just yet. She was probably waiting for the other two Powerpuffs to arrive.
As if on cue, Rolling Bubbles and Powered Buttercup appeared on scene from the kitchen. Noticing this, Blossom applied more force onto the mechanical tentacle with her yo-yo, knocking it away from her.
Having created a temporary reprieve in the battle, everyone finally got a chance to calmly assess their surroundings.
It seemed that during the encounter, Octavius had scooped up Utonium with one of his arms, with another pointing a small blade towards his neck. It was clear that this was a threat. Octavius had taken him hostage. If they didn't surrender, he would kill the professor.
"Put the professor down!" Bubbles cried, pointing her bubble wand towards the man. Her request was futile, as it was clear that Octavius was not going to be listening to what they were saying.
"Chem-ic…" Octavius' voice was raspy and confused. Like he hadn't ever used it before in his life. "Give… Z…"
"Girls!" Peter called, drawing their attention. "I think something's controlling his mind! Try not to hurt him too much if you can avoid it!"
Kaoru didn't appreciate Peter's instruction. "You tell him that!"
"Get out of here, Peter," Hyper Blossom instructed him, beginning to spin up her yo-yo once more. "We'll deal with this. Go check on Ken."
Peter followed the girl's instructions, scrambling across the cracked tiles back towards the kitchen. Behind him, he heard the girls attempting to negotiate with the doctor, however the cephalopod lookalike clearly was not listening.
Peter darted around the counter, finding Ken crouching down gazing at a video feed on his phone. It seemed to be surveillance footage of the girls fighting Otto, but it was from an oddly low angle. Ken glanced up at Peter for a moment, before returning his attention to the camera feed.
"Poochie, the girls can't do anything while Octavius is holding onto the professor. You need to create a distraction!" Ken's voice was fast and firm, while also conveying the gravity of the situation.
"Alright," the robotic dog's voice relayed through the mobile device's speakers. "Do you have any ideas?"
Peter had one. "My web fluid! I think I left a beaker of it in the chemistry room!" Within moments, his feet were moving once more. He used his enhanced agility to get to cross the lab much faster than he would have been able to previously.
He still couldn't hear anything coming from the direction of the fight, so he could only assume that they were still trying to talk Octavius down. While he hoped they would be successful, he still had to assume they wouldn't be.
The beaker of web fluid sat beside a centrifuge in the chemistry room, waiting for Peter to return to it to test its properties. But that could wait. Peter quickly donned his mask, grasped the beaker and, being careful not to spill it, began a hurried jog back to where Octavius was holding Utonium hostage.
All he had to do was give the girls an opening to get the professor to safety. Using his one beaker of web fluid, he could either try to incapacitate Octavius entirely, reduce the maneuverability of his arms, or cover up the blade.
The safest option of the three seemed to be the last one. The other options would likely have left Octavius with enough leeway to stab the professor, whereas covering up the blade would make it much more difficult for the doctor to cause immediate injury.
Peter's feet carried him around the final corner, granting him a clear view of Octavius' back. Two of his tentacles were suspending him above the ground, while the third grasped Utonium precariously and the fourth curled in front of him defensively while pointing a 7 inch blade towards the man's neck.
Perfect. All his arms were occupied. That meant that once he covered Octavius' blade arm, the man would either have to drop Utonium or use a handicapped arm to retaliate against him.
Peter sprinted towards the mind-controlled man, rearing the web beaker back over his right shoulder as he had seen baseball pitchers do many times on TV. He locked his eyes upon the blade and threw the beaker, hoping his aim was perfect.
Apparently it wasn't. Octavius had turned his body slightly towards the sounds of Peter's footsteps, so when the beaker reached him it struck him on his right cheek.
The webs quickly expanded and wrapped around his face, causing the doctor's mechanical tentacles to begin swinging rapidly in random directions.
Kaoru wrapped two arms around the blade arm, managing to hold it in what seemed to Peter to be some kind of headlock. Momoko threw her yo-yo, grabbing hold of Otto's body to stop him from moving around.
Peter ran forward to try to free the professor from Octavius' clutches, but as he approached he was knocked off balance by the very tentacle he was trying to reach. In the process, the mechanical arm loosened its grip around Utonium, propelling him towards the large glass outer wall of the lab.
The professor let out a scream as his body smashed through the glass window. Instantly, the buffeting winds rushed into the room, accompanied by a pool of water forming by the window.
"Dad!" Ken's voice carried from around the corner.
"Professor!" Peter exclaimed, running and jumping out of the hole that had formed in the window, hoping to be able to catch the man before he met a fire fate.
He heard the sounds of the girls' jet boots firing up, but he knew they were too far behind to save him in time. Maybe if they didn't have to avoid the flailing Octavius, they would have been fast enough. Peter was the only one that could reach Utonium in time.
Raindrops shattered upon impact with his face as he fell, and Peter formed his body as thin as he could to fall as quickly as possible. The only miscalculation Peter had made was his current lack of web-shooters.
The laws of physics and aerodynamics weren't on his side as Utonium's flailing body approached the pavement of the path outside just barely faster than he could reach him. Peter stretched his fingertips as far as they could extend, trying desperately to just graze the professor's skin, clothing, anything.
That would've been all he needed to pull the man towards himself to catch him. But with the ground rapidly approaching, Peter's fingers only caught air.
A chilling, wet smack reverberated from the place where Utonium impacted the concrete, disrupting the harsh downfall of rain around them.
Peter landed just ahead of his landing point, landing in an awkward sort of tumble, skidding to a stop a few metres away on the muddy grass beside the walkway.
His body didn't move for a few moments as he processed what had just happened. His heart raced, beating so hard the blood threatened to burst from his eardrums, but his muscles hardly so much as twitched in response.
He heard the girls land behind him, seemingly taking a moment to process the scene in front of them.
Miyako was the first to scream. It was probably the girls' first time seeing someone in that condition.
Peter slowly turned around, seeing Kaoru on her knees next to the professor, turning her ear towards his airway to check for breathing. Her eyes teared up slightly as she waited, before she rapidly blinked away the signs of weakness.
Momoko was frozen in shock, having fallen backwards onto the ground after landing. She slowly crawled backwards, away from the mentor they had grown so close to.
Miyako had flown back inside, likely not wanting to face the sight before them. He didn't blame her, he would probably have done the same if his legs were listening to him.
"He's… He's not breathing." Kaoru muttered, leaning backwards, away from the man's body. She slammed a fist into the concrete beneath her. "Shit!"
"This is my fault." Peter said, finally finding the power to speak. "If I hadn't missed my throw… Or if I had my web-shooters… or if I had managed to catch him…"
"This wasn't your fault." Kaoru tried to reassure him, but her voice wavered.
"It was my fault. If I had just… waited a little longer…"
"Shut up!" Kaoru yelled at him, clearly not appreciating his attitude. "There's no way you could've known this would happen! If this was anyone's fault, it's that damn Octavius'!"
"Dad!" Ken ran towards them from the lab's entrance, his brow soaked in sweat. He had probably come running all the way from the kitchen to check on his father.
Ken's yell seemed to break Momoko out of her trance. She shot up, grabbing Ken by the shoulders and stopping him from approaching his father's body.
"Let me go!" The boy yelled, squirming fruitlessly in the Powerpuff's grip. "Is dad okay?!"
Nobody replied to his question. But for the young scientist, that was all the information he needed.
"No! He can't be!"
Yet again, nobody responded to the boy genius.
Tears welled up in Ken's eyes as he thrashed about against Momoko's grip, all to no avail. Something irreversible had just occurred.
It was only a few minutes before an ambulance arrived, so Miyako must have called it. She was still nowhere in sight. They'd have to check up on her later. It would be a while before she would return to her regular bubbly personality.
Peter was most worried about Ken though. As the paramedics worked, to absolutely no avail, he wondered what would happen to the boy.
He knew the young scientist had already graduated university, but did that mean the city recognised him as a fully grown adult? Actually, did Ken have a mother?
Peter had completely forgotten about trying to stop Octavius. By the time the team thought to search for him, he was already long gone.
Well then... I can't exactly say that I was expecting to take this long to write this chapter. I don't really have a good excuse, either. I just didn't feel like writing it.
I mean I did kind of feel like I had written myself into a strange corner, and I can't say I'm completely happy with how this turned out, but I think if I don't release this as it is it won't ever get released.
So yeah. See you guys next time. Hopefully not next year, but I make absolutely zero promises.