Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh yeah. That is gonna be something I really think is gonna cause blowback. Academia doesn't like it when one person shuts out the leading experts, especially on something petty.
-
Going forward, links to content from Twitter (now X) will no longer be embedded. Pre-existing links should not be affected.
- Location
- That place over there.
- Pronouns
- He/Them
These are awesome, I'd love to read more if your muse is delivering.
Geas
Meat Thing
Can't namedrop Reed Richards without mentioning Doom. Plus I also asked myself 'since they already made Doc Ock the fairer gender, who could I also do the same with that, if I elect to use them in some fashion, would still remain for the most part true to the original character. Dr Doom was an easy choice.
TheOmnimercurial
Dragon Bard
- Location
- UK
May Reed receive unhealing anal fissures
- Location
- Indiana, US
I mean, Richard freezing her out and potentially destroying Alchemax is a shit thing to do... but she's also a villain for hire who nearly destroyed New York with an interdimensional portal. Annette's lucky that all of the heat is falling on Kingpin.
Reed Richard's arrogance and ... lack of social graces... stems from him not thinking about other people. He's not actively malicious and he's not trying to punish Alchemax for being involved with Fisk, he just isn't considering the consequences of his actions. He's busy with the science, everything else is secondary to him at best. Beneath his attention.
Annette isn't the first or last person to fall victim to Reed's obliviousness. The guy doesn't mean to be a dick, it's a side effect of having vastly different priorities than most other people. (Movie) Tony Stark had Pepper and Jarvis to reign him in, Reed at best has his wife and he's (in)famous for ignoring her, too.
I don't know if "accidental sociopathy" is a thing but Reed would be the textbook example except that he does have a conscience. You just need to remind him of it.
Although to be fair, Annette is still on Fisk's payroll and has already proven to be irresponsible with interdimensional technology. Of course she's not on the list of trusted researchers. She might get added to it if she just talked with Reed and explained the situation but I don't think her ego would allow her to do that and Reed might not see a reason to change his opinion. After all, he already determined the optimal decision based on hard facts...
I wonder where this story is going in regards to Taylor. It's fascinating but I don't see a great future for the former Khepri if she doesn't have powers. As Gwenpool said, unless you're wearing a mask you're just an extra. And extras die in comic book universes.
Annette isn't the first or last person to fall victim to Reed's obliviousness. The guy doesn't mean to be a dick, it's a side effect of having vastly different priorities than most other people. (Movie) Tony Stark had Pepper and Jarvis to reign him in, Reed at best has his wife and he's (in)famous for ignoring her, too.
I don't know if "accidental sociopathy" is a thing but Reed would be the textbook example except that he does have a conscience. You just need to remind him of it.
Although to be fair, Annette is still on Fisk's payroll and has already proven to be irresponsible with interdimensional technology. Of course she's not on the list of trusted researchers. She might get added to it if she just talked with Reed and explained the situation but I don't think her ego would allow her to do that and Reed might not see a reason to change his opinion. After all, he already determined the optimal decision based on hard facts...
I wonder where this story is going in regards to Taylor. It's fascinating but I don't see a great future for the former Khepri if she doesn't have powers. As Gwenpool said, unless you're wearing a mask you're just an extra. And extras die in comic book universes.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And? She's still one of the actual experts, sidelining her in favor of companies that I'm sure he has no financial or personal gains from looks sketchy.
Oh it's sketchy as fuck, but it also leads into some very interesting ethical issues - like that it's beyond dispute that Octavius has done wrong here, but does that make it right to blacklist her in the manner shown here?
Plus there's the whole facet of 'innocent until proven guilty', as well as the inherent elitism of gatekeeping an entire field of scientific research on the basis of 'oh it could be dangerous', without providing some method of ascertaining safety.
Finally there's also Reed's love of hypocrisy being the only thing that outweighs Galactus' appetite (I'm working off of the assumption that that did happen in this timeline, but I don't know), and so we get a veritable Gordian knot of ethical and moral questions that I really want to see Taylor cut through.
- Location
- That place over there.
- Pronouns
- He/Them
Also there's the fact that sidelining a villainous leaning but legal on paper scientist like that is how you push them full villain. Way better to bring them into the fold with lots of other people involved in their work than push them away to be isolated and hidden.
Evilreadermaximu
Unimpressed Asgard
Unfortunately realizing that would require Richards to possess "common" sense.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, blacklisting her from legit research just means now she has to go full criminal if she wants to survive. That is literally how you make a supervillain.
And gatekeepign the entire field is not gonna go well, because academia doesn't like it when one person acts as the gatekeeper. They know damn well that's how you lose fields of research. And I imagine he's made quite a few enemies in the process, because smart or not, people don't like losing their life's work because someone shut them out.
Yup. It would be one thing if there was a specific list of people who weren't allowed to do research in this field - it would still raise all kinds of ethical issues, but at least then Reed could point at a specific person and then list out all of the reasons why they can't be allowed to take part in this (hell from what I recall this is exactly what exists in many white-collar fields like law or medicine - only difference being that there's a council of multiple experts involved in determining if your fuckup was bad enough for you to get on the list), and he would at least have that to hide behind.
But having to prove to possibly the single biggest, unrestrained condescending know-it-all in the world that you should be allowed to do any research at all in this field is quite possibly the most frustrating thing I've seen in a hot minute (side note, well done @Geas for making use of that to have Annette be more sympathetic here).
Also I would absolutely love for there to be subplots of other, non-criminal researchers to publish in defiance of this edict, specifically to say 'fuck you, Richards'.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Exactly. Like disbarment has a investigation, hearing to defend yourself, and so on. Not just someone rocking up, throwing your law degree into a shredder, and going "And that's that, have fun in the poorhouse".
Especially since she can make a valid argument she didn't exactly have a choice in the matter. Was she supposed to tell the very large and scary crime boss no?
I can see quite a few people calling him Lysenko made manifest again, if he's doing this. Especially since odds are he's done it before.
- Location
- San Diego
Would love to see some form of blow back on Reed, and these villains getting together and making their voices heard.
Mary Jane is alive in this universe, and possibly could be working for a news agency. And so she could interview them and eventually start to see the sociopath tendencies of Reed Richards who has single handedly black listed dozens of top scientists, without a second thought, but also shortly after unveiled his own tech that looks oddly like tech derived from those scientists he got shit canned.
Also. The argument Victoire and Reed had to have had in this universe must be something incredibly loud and destructive.
Mary Jane is alive in this universe, and possibly could be working for a news agency. And so she could interview them and eventually start to see the sociopath tendencies of Reed Richards who has single handedly black listed dozens of top scientists, without a second thought, but also shortly after unveiled his own tech that looks oddly like tech derived from those scientists he got shit canned.
Also. The argument Victoire and Reed had to have had in this universe must be something incredibly loud and destructive.
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Hopefully it will happen at some point. The man definitely annoys me too, and this chapter is all I know of him.
I at least recognized that Victor got genderswapped, so that was interesting. I wonder if there could be some form of alliance, if she's merely an opponent of him and possibly not a villain yet? Although it's not like that would stop the Heberts...
Worms, Spiders and Octopi 3
Geas
Meat Thing
This is getting out of hand, now there's three of them!
Also I think I may need a better goddamn name for this snippets than Worms, Spiders and Octopi.
~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~
Numbness of a physical variety was something that Annette had by necessity become accustomed to. Emotional numbness however was something that never failed to cause her thoughts to hitch and stutter, like an old and poorly-maintained car with a failing engine. Taylor running away… Annette probably should have been hurt, or angry at herself (never at Taylor), or miserably sad.
Anything but the cold numbness that crawled around underneath her skin.
Mechanically, she slid back into the steering wheel of her car. It took her four times to turn the ignition because her hand kept shaking which was stupid because she was numb and didn't feel anything yet clearly her stupid hand disagreed. She finally paused and forced herself to take a deep, slow breath. Then a second and third, until the trembling of her fingers had finally eased.
Except now Annette's eyes burned. It made driving so annoying that she almost gave into the impulse to inflate her tentacles and let them handle steering and watching the road. That would have been stupid, because she took considerable care in distancing 'Doctor Annette Olivia-Rose Octavius' from the urban legend that was 'Doc Ock' the few times circumstances had forced her hand. People seeing the former with the latter's extremely distinctive four mechanical tentacles, consisting of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene and carbon fiber fabric over a unique hydraulic-pneumatic tube system and terminating in titanium-niobium steel alloy claws, would have been counterproductive to put it delicately, and would have put both her career and her company at risk.
Taylor rejected her.
The thought made her hands tighten on the steering wheel until the blood drained from her knuckles.
'Deep breaths,' Annette, she told herself. 'Breathe. This is probably for the best that she took the decision out of your hands. This way, you can focus on salvaging your reputation before Richards can ruin it further with his patriarchal bullshit, sever your connections to Fisk, and save your company from going under. Taylor's a big girl. She'll be fine. And she's not your daughter.' Annette took another calming breath.
She then bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
The pain did precious little to clear her head.
~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~
Annette had nearly reached Alchemax and in fact had just turned onto the forest road leading to her research facility before it occurred to her that maybe she should have driven herself home instead. For a moment she considered turning around, but only for a moment. It wasn't as if she had anyone to go home to at the moment, and it wouldn't be the first time that she spent the night in either her office or lab. The latter in particular felt a safer choice than an empty apartment on the edge of New York City.
Of course, it was at that moment that Annette remembered that tomorrow was garbage pick-up and knowing her elderly neighbor, he was going to take her garbage bins to the curb along with his own in the wee hours of the early morning if she wasn't there to stop him. It didn't matter that he was well into his 90s, or that she had told him countless times that he didn't have to make such an effort because she wasn't home enough to build up much garbage anyways. He'd just smile and chuckle and agree with a wink from behind those enormous old Cartier Vendome sunglasses that he always wore. Then he'd take out her bins anyways.
It wasn't quite sunset yet, though the sun was clearly beginning to dip below the horizon when she parked her car. At a glance it appeared that most of her employees had already headed out for the day. Fortunately, that meant that she likely wouldn't have to address the concerns of her employees just yet about how Alchemax was going to survive the next few months.
Unfortunately, that meant that she also would have to deal with one of the 'security specialists' that she'd hired at Fisk's insistence, because one of them was very obviously waiting for her and wasn't bothering to hide it.
"Evening, Doc," the towering albino mockingly hissed out in a sibilant whisper around the toothpick clenched between his teeth. The giant of a man leisurely strolled forward with all of the casual arrogance of a large predator that wasn't particularly hungry and his black suit, despite its flattering and expensive cut - failed to adequately disguise a physique that was entirely capable of very literally breaking most men and women in half.
Alonzo Lincoln, more commonly known as Tombstone in certain circles, had built up his reputation as a mobster doing just that to a number of people.
Annette let her expression relax into carefully bland calm as she met the man's gaze.
"Mister Lincoln," she replied in a neutral and deliberately bored tone in greeting as she calmly strode for the front doors of Alchemax Labs, though in reality she gave the mobster her undivided attention. Lincoln was far too dangerous to be dismissive of. A dim thug he may be, but he was a superpowered and more importantly dangerously cunning creature all the same. That he managed to avoid capture and arrest when Fisk and Gargan ended up in police custody only emphasized that. "I expected you to be fully preoccupied in whatever task our currently-incarcerated benefactor requires of you, rather than reporting in for a late shift."
The albino African-American's lips peeled away from his teeth in a humorless grin that would have done a crocodile proud. Annette felt the hair in the back of her neck prickle as the large man smoothly fell into step beside her, and was uncomfortably reminded of the fact that Fisk's current right hand man was easily four times her mass in muscle alone. Annette was not a short woman either, yet he effortlessly loomed over her by at least a head without even trying.
"Well Doc, you know how it goes," he said with a leisurely roll of his broad shoulders. "Someone's gotta make evidence go missin'. Encourage witnesses to clam up, or change their minds about what they thought they saw… or just plain ol' disappear. Maybe even a prosecutor or a judge or a witness for a case finds some pictures in the mail of their daughter, and the mall that the girl likes to go to. The tea she likes to drink, the book she's currently reading. Who she eats lunch with. Her cute lil' boyish haircut and that silly little knit cap. The goofy bald dad with the weak chin and the cheap rental car. Things like that."
Annette felt her stomach turn to ice, and though she tried to control her reactions, her eyes widened all the same. Lincoln's whispery chuckle made it all too obvious that he noticed how what he said had struck a nerve.
Annette came to a sudden stop mere meters away from the glass doors of Alchemax's main entrance, and pivoted to stare up at the smirking mobster looming over her with that crocodilian grin still on his lips. Annette felt a twitch begin just above her right eye.
"Now, now, Doc," the mobster said with playfully false reassurance. "The Boss is a real understandin' guy about a lot of things, ya know? It's a real crazy world we live in, these days, and all sorts of crazy and sometimes unfortunate things happen. Dangerous things, Doc. Especially to such a twig of a girl who's clearly had some bad stuff happen already. Ya know, 'cause of that empty sleeve? Had to have been a bad injury, that. Personally, I'm kinda impressed she survived it."
Lincoln's smile grew just a little wider as he stared mercilessly down into Annette's eyes, even as her heart thudded painfully against her ribs.
"The Boss also understands that sometimes, even a really smart person is sometimes tempted, just a lil' bit, to make certain choices to make certain things a little easier for themselves. But see, the Boss also understands that that's just temptation messin' with such a smart person. A smart person would know not to run their mouths about certain things if their situation starts lookin' a little uncertain, or if certain people start asking hard questions about certain pieces of equi-"
Lincoln suddenly stopped talking, and instead his eyes began to bulge out as his toothpick abruptly fell from his lips.
At first, Annette couldn't understand why the mobster had suddenly stopped making thinly veiled and genuinely terrifying threats abouther daughter's Taylor's safety and well-being, on top of revealing that Fisk had definitely been having her watched without her realizing it. Then she wondered why she was suddenly able to look Lincoln in the eyes without having to strain her neck.
"Oh," she found herself saying when she finally noticed the semi-transparent tentacle of polyethylene and carbon fiber fabric and pneumatic tubing coiled dangerously tight around the giant man's thick tree trunk of a neck. She hadn't even felt her tentacles inflate and expand, yet when she glanced down she realized that two of them were supporting her weight until she was the one looking over him. A third tentacle was doing it's very best to crush the mobster's trachea and clamp down on the carotid arteries in his neck, and had also coiled around his legs and had crushed his arms against his chest even as he frantically tried his hardest to pull her tentacle from his neck before he lost consciousness.
"Oh," Annette quietly repeated. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath.
Then she very carefully and deliberately put her hair up.
"Mister Lincoln. Alonzo. Tombstone," Doctor Octopus said in a quietly dangerous tone as she glared hard into the big man's eyes. He hoarsely squeaked in response and his eyes began to flutter and roll back in their sockets. An instant later he sucked in a wheezing breath as the tentacle coiled around his neck relaxed a fraction of a centimeter. He coughed and his lips pulled back in a snarl as he tried to thrash his way free only to freeze when four metal claws firmly gripped his head and face, mere centimeters away from gouging his eyes out.
"Tombstone," Doctor Octopus repeated with an eerie lack of emotion to her voice. Lincoln tried to say something, only to choke when she briefly tightened the tentacle around his neck again. "From your observed feats of strength - throwing an SUV half a block for example - I estimate that you can lift approximately six tons without strain. You have impressive physical durability as well, able to endure fantastically extreme heat as well as significant cold. Most impressive is your skin, which has the tensile strength of diamond, allegedly, while still possessing human elasticity. So very, very elastic. But what about the tissues underneath your fascinating epidermis? The fascia that connects your impressive skin to the muscle underneath?"
As pale as Tombstone was, somehow he grew even paler while looking into the enraged scientist's eyes as she said, "I theorize that with sufficient external force, force that my tentacles should be easily capable of applying by the way, I could peel that incredible skin from your body. Like a banana. For best effect, I'd have to start at your mouth. That way, I'd maximize my chances of peeling your skin off without tearing it. I'm sure that I can find impressive uses for six feet and seven inches of leather with the tensile strength of diamond.
"H-hey, look Doc, th-this is just busine-"
"Shhhh," she pressed a slender finger to his lips. "As physically durable as you are, Mister Lincoln, there's a good possibility that even you might die from such an experience, but don't worry." Her smile grew wider, and she let her finger slide almost sensually down from the big man's thin lips, and began unbuttoning his shirt." I'll do my best to draw it out, just for you. None of my doctorates are in medicine - not yet - but I am a very rapid learner with an extraordinarily high intelligence quota. Vivisecting a human that just so happens to be superpowered will no doubt be a very educational experience."
"It's the B-Boss, not me!" Lincoln frantically rasped out. "He's been havin' you watched ever since before the Spider-Brat trussed him up for the cops!"
Doctor Octopus's fingers froze at the third button of his dress shirt. As the dark humor faded from her face and her hard and angry green eyes rose to meet his pale red paze, one of her tentacles firmly grabbed his jaw.
"I'm waiting, Mister Lincoln," she coldly said as she arched an eyebrow.
"The Boss found out about her when she came outta wherever hidin' place you had her and started meeting!" Lincoln swiftly replied. "He knows that she's your kid, and that that means you must've gotten your fancy machine workin' proper at least once an' used it to bring her here!"
Annette blinked twice, momentarily but absolutely dumbfounded for just the barest of moments, because that was absolutely not how Taylor and Danny had made it to her Earth. She almost corrected the superpowered mobster, but found herself holding her tongue before the first word left her lips.
As far as most of the world knew, all the refugees from the "Golden Sky Disaster" had deported either back to their home worlds - if said alternate Earths were still habitable or even still existed - or to whatever other Earth they could be sent to thanks to Richards. Taylor was one of the very rare few that managed to avoid that fate, entirely because the hospital that she'd ended up in had - for once - refused to discharge a critically injured but uninsured patient before she was medically fit to leave.
By the time Taylor had been ready for discharge, it had no longer been possible for her to be sent to another Earth. Danny managed to stay presumably because he was Taylor's only family.
The thought that Fisk had come to believe that Annette had been either deliberately holding back on him or worse had outright deceived him by using his dangerous plan to find a version of her own family was concerning. She had - with some reluctance - accepted funding from the crime boss because he was genuinely brilliant in his own way. Originally, taking his money was simple. He needed it laundered and Alchemax was a useful link in a chain that obscured just where said money came from and went to, with a respectable amount going to properly fund Alchemax's various research projects.
Then Fisk had learned of Annette's super-collider project.
Fisk was a coldly logical and pragmatic man… save where his dead wife and son were concerned. The wife and son that he had personally murdered the original Spider Man to regain. That, from a certain point of view, he had lost twice. He had even murdered one of his own 'security contractors' over that goal just for slightly being in the way.
Tombstone being sent to warn Annette about not talking to the authorities was as much a polite warning as it was a very serious threat, one that made it abundantly clear that Fisk could very easily become a threat to her. Or worse, to…
"Mister Lincoln," Annette began with a calm that she didn't truly feel as she set the massive man very carefully back down onto his dress shoes, "I believe that it is safe to say that your services here at Alchemax will no longer be required. A shame, as you've a gift for ensuring that Alchemax security operated with a very respectable degree of efficiency. But in recognition of your excellent service, I'll see to it that you're issued two months of severance pay, and will pen a letter of recommendation to any future employers interested in your unique services."
Annette looked up at Tombstone with a wintery smile as she slid her hands across his chest, making the giant man visibly shiver. But all she did was pluck the ID badge from his breast pocket. The moment her tentacles uncoiled from around him, Lincoln hastily backpedaled and rubbed at his throat, all the while watching her with far more wary caution in his eyes than he used to have.
"Uh… right," he warily replied, clearly half expecting some manner of last-minute violence from her the moment he dropped his guard. It made Annette think that the man truly had been a mobster for far too long… On the other hand, she'd been seriously considering killing him in an especially horrific manner mere moments ago, so perhaps he wasn't wrong. "... Thanks, Doc."
"Don't mention it. And Mister Lincoln?"
"Yeah, Doc?"
"Do keep in mind that if our benefactor does have any designs on a certain young woman…" Doctor Octopus smiled a very unpleasant smile, "a human brain can survive for approximately four minutes without fresh oxygenated blood before permanent brain damage begins. With your impressively enhanced stamina, I fully expect that to extend to at least an hour, if you're foolish enough to irritate me. So keep my daughter's name out of your fucking mouth. I hope that I'm being sufficiently clear."
"C-crystal, Doc."
It was only after the massive man turned to flee, that Annette inwardly cursed at acknowledging Taylor as her daughter. The only relief was that the few employees still on site didn't seem to notice her… 'unorthodox termination' of Alonzo Lincoln. She also would have to make sure to check the security cameras and remove any imagery of the confrontation.
Sighing and rubbing her forehead, Annette let her hair back down then belatedly fully collapsed and retracted her tentacles before making her way inside the building. Never mind trying to distract herself from her disaster of a meeting with Taylor; dealing with Lincoln and learning that Fisk had her, Taylor and Danny in his sights was problematic, and if she were being honest with herself, somewhat distressing. She was going to have to go over Alchemax's security very thoroughly and try to locate any surprises that either Tombstone or the Kingpin may have already put into place; that included possibly removing any security personnel that might have also been hired after Lincoln went onto Alchemax's payroll at Fisk's 'suggestion.'
This was already calling for a glass of the Moscato that Annette kept in her private office slash lab for special occasions. Fortunately the day could not possibly get any worse, she concluded as she strode into her office.
Then she froze and blinked because somehow, someone was in her locked and secured office waiting for her. Two someones actually.
"Ah, there you are, Doctor Octavius," one of her research assistants nervously apologized, shoulders hunched and not-quite-hiding behind a tablet PC as if it were a shield. "I'm really really really sorry but he insisted but he said he wasn't here to arrest anyone even though he somehow bypassed the entire building's security without setting off the alarms and just came right up to me while I was on my break and I wasn't sure what I should do but I didn't think you, I m-mean we, we're doing anything wrong-" It only took a glance to recognize her as Adrianne Phillips, one of the few biologists and biochemists in Alchemax's employ. Intelligent, hard working, a bit mousey, and if Annette were honest with herself, more than a little cute at times but Annette very firmly believed that an employer should not have relations with employees.
No matter how delightfully shapely they were.
"It's quite alright, Miss Phillips," Annette said reassuringly without taking her eyes off of the man. That only prompted Phillips to immediately dart away from him and all but hide behind Annette. "I'm sure our uninvited guest has a reason for intruding."
The remarkably plain-looking man gave a congenial and a smile that could only be called 'politely apologetic,' and his bland expression and receding hairline gave him an air of easy forgettability, especially given the well-tailored suit that all but screamed 'government paper pusher.'
"My apologies, Doctor Octavius," he said as he stepped closer and offered a handshake. "I'd have introduced myself sooner, but you appeared to be rather preoccupied with relieving Mister Alonzo Lincoln of his employment with your company."
Annette froze just as she began to reach for the man's hand.
"I'm Phil Coulson, with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. If you have a moment, I really do need to talk with you about a few things."
~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~
This distracted me from the next update for Callsign: Owl. But now I'm free, free, free! Free to pay attention to my other projects! Of which I have too damn many now. If my muse comes at me with another new idea, it's getting tazed and thrown into the trunk of my car.
Also I think I may need a better goddamn name for this snippets than Worms, Spiders and Octopi.
~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~
Numbness of a physical variety was something that Annette had by necessity become accustomed to. Emotional numbness however was something that never failed to cause her thoughts to hitch and stutter, like an old and poorly-maintained car with a failing engine. Taylor running away… Annette probably should have been hurt, or angry at herself (never at Taylor), or miserably sad.
Anything but the cold numbness that crawled around underneath her skin.
Mechanically, she slid back into the steering wheel of her car. It took her four times to turn the ignition because her hand kept shaking which was stupid because she was numb and didn't feel anything yet clearly her stupid hand disagreed. She finally paused and forced herself to take a deep, slow breath. Then a second and third, until the trembling of her fingers had finally eased.
Except now Annette's eyes burned. It made driving so annoying that she almost gave into the impulse to inflate her tentacles and let them handle steering and watching the road. That would have been stupid, because she took considerable care in distancing 'Doctor Annette Olivia-Rose Octavius' from the urban legend that was 'Doc Ock' the few times circumstances had forced her hand. People seeing the former with the latter's extremely distinctive four mechanical tentacles, consisting of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene and carbon fiber fabric over a unique hydraulic-pneumatic tube system and terminating in titanium-niobium steel alloy claws, would have been counterproductive to put it delicately, and would have put both her career and her company at risk.
Taylor rejected her.
The thought made her hands tighten on the steering wheel until the blood drained from her knuckles.
'Deep breaths,' Annette, she told herself. 'Breathe. This is probably for the best that she took the decision out of your hands. This way, you can focus on salvaging your reputation before Richards can ruin it further with his patriarchal bullshit, sever your connections to Fisk, and save your company from going under. Taylor's a big girl. She'll be fine. And she's not your daughter.' Annette took another calming breath.
She then bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
The pain did precious little to clear her head.
~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~
Annette had nearly reached Alchemax and in fact had just turned onto the forest road leading to her research facility before it occurred to her that maybe she should have driven herself home instead. For a moment she considered turning around, but only for a moment. It wasn't as if she had anyone to go home to at the moment, and it wouldn't be the first time that she spent the night in either her office or lab. The latter in particular felt a safer choice than an empty apartment on the edge of New York City.
Of course, it was at that moment that Annette remembered that tomorrow was garbage pick-up and knowing her elderly neighbor, he was going to take her garbage bins to the curb along with his own in the wee hours of the early morning if she wasn't there to stop him. It didn't matter that he was well into his 90s, or that she had told him countless times that he didn't have to make such an effort because she wasn't home enough to build up much garbage anyways. He'd just smile and chuckle and agree with a wink from behind those enormous old Cartier Vendome sunglasses that he always wore. Then he'd take out her bins anyways.
It wasn't quite sunset yet, though the sun was clearly beginning to dip below the horizon when she parked her car. At a glance it appeared that most of her employees had already headed out for the day. Fortunately, that meant that she likely wouldn't have to address the concerns of her employees just yet about how Alchemax was going to survive the next few months.
Unfortunately, that meant that she also would have to deal with one of the 'security specialists' that she'd hired at Fisk's insistence, because one of them was very obviously waiting for her and wasn't bothering to hide it.
"Evening, Doc," the towering albino mockingly hissed out in a sibilant whisper around the toothpick clenched between his teeth. The giant of a man leisurely strolled forward with all of the casual arrogance of a large predator that wasn't particularly hungry and his black suit, despite its flattering and expensive cut - failed to adequately disguise a physique that was entirely capable of very literally breaking most men and women in half.
Alonzo Lincoln, more commonly known as Tombstone in certain circles, had built up his reputation as a mobster doing just that to a number of people.
Annette let her expression relax into carefully bland calm as she met the man's gaze.
"Mister Lincoln," she replied in a neutral and deliberately bored tone in greeting as she calmly strode for the front doors of Alchemax Labs, though in reality she gave the mobster her undivided attention. Lincoln was far too dangerous to be dismissive of. A dim thug he may be, but he was a superpowered and more importantly dangerously cunning creature all the same. That he managed to avoid capture and arrest when Fisk and Gargan ended up in police custody only emphasized that. "I expected you to be fully preoccupied in whatever task our currently-incarcerated benefactor requires of you, rather than reporting in for a late shift."
The albino African-American's lips peeled away from his teeth in a humorless grin that would have done a crocodile proud. Annette felt the hair in the back of her neck prickle as the large man smoothly fell into step beside her, and was uncomfortably reminded of the fact that Fisk's current right hand man was easily four times her mass in muscle alone. Annette was not a short woman either, yet he effortlessly loomed over her by at least a head without even trying.
"Well Doc, you know how it goes," he said with a leisurely roll of his broad shoulders. "Someone's gotta make evidence go missin'. Encourage witnesses to clam up, or change their minds about what they thought they saw… or just plain ol' disappear. Maybe even a prosecutor or a judge or a witness for a case finds some pictures in the mail of their daughter, and the mall that the girl likes to go to. The tea she likes to drink, the book she's currently reading. Who she eats lunch with. Her cute lil' boyish haircut and that silly little knit cap. The goofy bald dad with the weak chin and the cheap rental car. Things like that."
Annette felt her stomach turn to ice, and though she tried to control her reactions, her eyes widened all the same. Lincoln's whispery chuckle made it all too obvious that he noticed how what he said had struck a nerve.
Annette came to a sudden stop mere meters away from the glass doors of Alchemax's main entrance, and pivoted to stare up at the smirking mobster looming over her with that crocodilian grin still on his lips. Annette felt a twitch begin just above her right eye.
"Now, now, Doc," the mobster said with playfully false reassurance. "The Boss is a real understandin' guy about a lot of things, ya know? It's a real crazy world we live in, these days, and all sorts of crazy and sometimes unfortunate things happen. Dangerous things, Doc. Especially to such a twig of a girl who's clearly had some bad stuff happen already. Ya know, 'cause of that empty sleeve? Had to have been a bad injury, that. Personally, I'm kinda impressed she survived it."
Lincoln's smile grew just a little wider as he stared mercilessly down into Annette's eyes, even as her heart thudded painfully against her ribs.
"The Boss also understands that sometimes, even a really smart person is sometimes tempted, just a lil' bit, to make certain choices to make certain things a little easier for themselves. But see, the Boss also understands that that's just temptation messin' with such a smart person. A smart person would know not to run their mouths about certain things if their situation starts lookin' a little uncertain, or if certain people start asking hard questions about certain pieces of equi-"
Lincoln suddenly stopped talking, and instead his eyes began to bulge out as his toothpick abruptly fell from his lips.
At first, Annette couldn't understand why the mobster had suddenly stopped making thinly veiled and genuinely terrifying threats about
"Oh," she found herself saying when she finally noticed the semi-transparent tentacle of polyethylene and carbon fiber fabric and pneumatic tubing coiled dangerously tight around the giant man's thick tree trunk of a neck. She hadn't even felt her tentacles inflate and expand, yet when she glanced down she realized that two of them were supporting her weight until she was the one looking over him. A third tentacle was doing it's very best to crush the mobster's trachea and clamp down on the carotid arteries in his neck, and had also coiled around his legs and had crushed his arms against his chest even as he frantically tried his hardest to pull her tentacle from his neck before he lost consciousness.
"Oh," Annette quietly repeated. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath.
Then she very carefully and deliberately put her hair up.
"Mister Lincoln. Alonzo. Tombstone," Doctor Octopus said in a quietly dangerous tone as she glared hard into the big man's eyes. He hoarsely squeaked in response and his eyes began to flutter and roll back in their sockets. An instant later he sucked in a wheezing breath as the tentacle coiled around his neck relaxed a fraction of a centimeter. He coughed and his lips pulled back in a snarl as he tried to thrash his way free only to freeze when four metal claws firmly gripped his head and face, mere centimeters away from gouging his eyes out.
"Tombstone," Doctor Octopus repeated with an eerie lack of emotion to her voice. Lincoln tried to say something, only to choke when she briefly tightened the tentacle around his neck again. "From your observed feats of strength - throwing an SUV half a block for example - I estimate that you can lift approximately six tons without strain. You have impressive physical durability as well, able to endure fantastically extreme heat as well as significant cold. Most impressive is your skin, which has the tensile strength of diamond, allegedly, while still possessing human elasticity. So very, very elastic. But what about the tissues underneath your fascinating epidermis? The fascia that connects your impressive skin to the muscle underneath?"
As pale as Tombstone was, somehow he grew even paler while looking into the enraged scientist's eyes as she said, "I theorize that with sufficient external force, force that my tentacles should be easily capable of applying by the way, I could peel that incredible skin from your body. Like a banana. For best effect, I'd have to start at your mouth. That way, I'd maximize my chances of peeling your skin off without tearing it. I'm sure that I can find impressive uses for six feet and seven inches of leather with the tensile strength of diamond.
"H-hey, look Doc, th-this is just busine-"
"Shhhh," she pressed a slender finger to his lips. "As physically durable as you are, Mister Lincoln, there's a good possibility that even you might die from such an experience, but don't worry." Her smile grew wider, and she let her finger slide almost sensually down from the big man's thin lips, and began unbuttoning his shirt." I'll do my best to draw it out, just for you. None of my doctorates are in medicine - not yet - but I am a very rapid learner with an extraordinarily high intelligence quota. Vivisecting a human that just so happens to be superpowered will no doubt be a very educational experience."
"It's the B-Boss, not me!" Lincoln frantically rasped out. "He's been havin' you watched ever since before the Spider-Brat trussed him up for the cops!"
Doctor Octopus's fingers froze at the third button of his dress shirt. As the dark humor faded from her face and her hard and angry green eyes rose to meet his pale red paze, one of her tentacles firmly grabbed his jaw.
"I'm waiting, Mister Lincoln," she coldly said as she arched an eyebrow.
"The Boss found out about her when she came outta wherever hidin' place you had her and started meeting!" Lincoln swiftly replied. "He knows that she's your kid, and that that means you must've gotten your fancy machine workin' proper at least once an' used it to bring her here!"
Annette blinked twice, momentarily but absolutely dumbfounded for just the barest of moments, because that was absolutely not how Taylor and Danny had made it to her Earth. She almost corrected the superpowered mobster, but found herself holding her tongue before the first word left her lips.
As far as most of the world knew, all the refugees from the "Golden Sky Disaster" had deported either back to their home worlds - if said alternate Earths were still habitable or even still existed - or to whatever other Earth they could be sent to thanks to Richards. Taylor was one of the very rare few that managed to avoid that fate, entirely because the hospital that she'd ended up in had - for once - refused to discharge a critically injured but uninsured patient before she was medically fit to leave.
By the time Taylor had been ready for discharge, it had no longer been possible for her to be sent to another Earth. Danny managed to stay presumably because he was Taylor's only family.
The thought that Fisk had come to believe that Annette had been either deliberately holding back on him or worse had outright deceived him by using his dangerous plan to find a version of her own family was concerning. She had - with some reluctance - accepted funding from the crime boss because he was genuinely brilliant in his own way. Originally, taking his money was simple. He needed it laundered and Alchemax was a useful link in a chain that obscured just where said money came from and went to, with a respectable amount going to properly fund Alchemax's various research projects.
Then Fisk had learned of Annette's super-collider project.
Fisk was a coldly logical and pragmatic man… save where his dead wife and son were concerned. The wife and son that he had personally murdered the original Spider Man to regain. That, from a certain point of view, he had lost twice. He had even murdered one of his own 'security contractors' over that goal just for slightly being in the way.
Tombstone being sent to warn Annette about not talking to the authorities was as much a polite warning as it was a very serious threat, one that made it abundantly clear that Fisk could very easily become a threat to her. Or worse, to…
"Mister Lincoln," Annette began with a calm that she didn't truly feel as she set the massive man very carefully back down onto his dress shoes, "I believe that it is safe to say that your services here at Alchemax will no longer be required. A shame, as you've a gift for ensuring that Alchemax security operated with a very respectable degree of efficiency. But in recognition of your excellent service, I'll see to it that you're issued two months of severance pay, and will pen a letter of recommendation to any future employers interested in your unique services."
Annette looked up at Tombstone with a wintery smile as she slid her hands across his chest, making the giant man visibly shiver. But all she did was pluck the ID badge from his breast pocket. The moment her tentacles uncoiled from around him, Lincoln hastily backpedaled and rubbed at his throat, all the while watching her with far more wary caution in his eyes than he used to have.
"Uh… right," he warily replied, clearly half expecting some manner of last-minute violence from her the moment he dropped his guard. It made Annette think that the man truly had been a mobster for far too long… On the other hand, she'd been seriously considering killing him in an especially horrific manner mere moments ago, so perhaps he wasn't wrong. "... Thanks, Doc."
"Don't mention it. And Mister Lincoln?"
"Yeah, Doc?"
"Do keep in mind that if our benefactor does have any designs on a certain young woman…" Doctor Octopus smiled a very unpleasant smile, "a human brain can survive for approximately four minutes without fresh oxygenated blood before permanent brain damage begins. With your impressively enhanced stamina, I fully expect that to extend to at least an hour, if you're foolish enough to irritate me. So keep my daughter's name out of your fucking mouth. I hope that I'm being sufficiently clear."
"C-crystal, Doc."
It was only after the massive man turned to flee, that Annette inwardly cursed at acknowledging Taylor as her daughter. The only relief was that the few employees still on site didn't seem to notice her… 'unorthodox termination' of Alonzo Lincoln. She also would have to make sure to check the security cameras and remove any imagery of the confrontation.
Sighing and rubbing her forehead, Annette let her hair back down then belatedly fully collapsed and retracted her tentacles before making her way inside the building. Never mind trying to distract herself from her disaster of a meeting with Taylor; dealing with Lincoln and learning that Fisk had her, Taylor and Danny in his sights was problematic, and if she were being honest with herself, somewhat distressing. She was going to have to go over Alchemax's security very thoroughly and try to locate any surprises that either Tombstone or the Kingpin may have already put into place; that included possibly removing any security personnel that might have also been hired after Lincoln went onto Alchemax's payroll at Fisk's 'suggestion.'
This was already calling for a glass of the Moscato that Annette kept in her private office slash lab for special occasions. Fortunately the day could not possibly get any worse, she concluded as she strode into her office.
Then she froze and blinked because somehow, someone was in her locked and secured office waiting for her. Two someones actually.
"Ah, there you are, Doctor Octavius," one of her research assistants nervously apologized, shoulders hunched and not-quite-hiding behind a tablet PC as if it were a shield. "I'm really really really sorry but he insisted but he said he wasn't here to arrest anyone even though he somehow bypassed the entire building's security without setting off the alarms and just came right up to me while I was on my break and I wasn't sure what I should do but I didn't think you, I m-mean we, we're doing anything wrong-" It only took a glance to recognize her as Adrianne Phillips, one of the few biologists and biochemists in Alchemax's employ. Intelligent, hard working, a bit mousey, and if Annette were honest with herself, more than a little cute at times but Annette very firmly believed that an employer should not have relations with employees.
No matter how delightfully shapely they were.
"It's quite alright, Miss Phillips," Annette said reassuringly without taking her eyes off of the man. That only prompted Phillips to immediately dart away from him and all but hide behind Annette. "I'm sure our uninvited guest has a reason for intruding."
The remarkably plain-looking man gave a congenial and a smile that could only be called 'politely apologetic,' and his bland expression and receding hairline gave him an air of easy forgettability, especially given the well-tailored suit that all but screamed 'government paper pusher.'
"My apologies, Doctor Octavius," he said as he stepped closer and offered a handshake. "I'd have introduced myself sooner, but you appeared to be rather preoccupied with relieving Mister Alonzo Lincoln of his employment with your company."
Annette froze just as she began to reach for the man's hand.
"I'm Phil Coulson, with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. If you have a moment, I really do need to talk with you about a few things."
~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~ ~~{}~~
This distracted me from the next update for Callsign: Owl. But now I'm free, free, free! Free to pay attention to my other projects! Of which I have too damn many now. If my muse comes at me with another new idea, it's getting tazed and thrown into the trunk of my car.
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verycoolname
Not actually cool
I liked this chapter a lot better than the last one. I should probably feel bad about enjoying the schadenfreude as much as I did.
Geas
Meat Thing
Thanks! I seem to be finding my stride with this notion. Also, if this stuff keeps coming out like this, I may have to shuffle it into its own thread. 😅
verycoolname
Not actually cool
It's a compelling idea, especially with the arrival of good old Coulson. Doctor Octopus might be a villain, but she's a smart cookie and probably learned from her boss's example. It'd be neat to see where she goes next.
(Also, still holding out for Reed Richards getting humbled.)
- Location
- San Diego
We all want him to get humbled. And viciously at that. I'm sure Doom will have a hamd in arranging it.
Your words are delicious; I shall wait for more. 
I got a little teary eyed at this one. Goow work.
This could absolutely be its own thread -- I'm definitely interested in where the story is going!