DISARMED
A Spider-Man/Doc Ock story
By RW
Chapter One
Doctor Otto Octavius walked down the long, narrow aisle, his shoes scraping the rough tilework. A guard on either side of him, armed with rather primitive firearms, kept in step as they escorted him to his cell. The yells and taunts of the rabble was a deafening, noxious clamor completely unsuitable to his nature. The world, he had mused, would be the better were it silent. The make of a scientist was one of concentration and keen attention to the points of relevancy, and this noise--was intolerable.
The guards stopped and one of them motioned to his left. Otto looked, then raised a contemptuous brow.
"I require a solitary cell," he demanded.
The guard snorted--animal!--then unlocked the cell and threw him roughly in.
"Nobody cares what you require, ya fat loser," the guard spat. Otto had time to catch his name tag--Larson--as he and his partner turned and walked down.
Otto adjusted his glasses, knocked askew by the brute's impudence, then eyed his cellmate. Life, Otto reasoned, was divided into various orders. The general controls the lieutenants and they control the privates. People were divided by temperament and intelligence and the combinations made up the hierarchy. Lesser gave way to greater. His cell mate was Caucasian, middle-aged, and though he had a fading scar over the left side of his mouth, Otto suspected he was a white-collar criminal. Possibly extortion or industrial espionage.
"Do you know who I am?" Otto asked--though it galled to lower himself thus.
The man nodded, his lips pressed firm. A good sign.
"Then you likely know something of my influence in the criminal community."
Another nod.
"Ergo, you know exactly what I can and cannot do, even inside these walls."
A third nod. Excellent.
"I have need of you. The guard, Larson. Tell me everything you can find out about him. You have four--no, three days."
The man's face went white. Otto turned to lay down.
"If you disturb me, the time limit will be halved," Otto informed him. "A second disturbance will result in termination."
"T-Termination?"
Otto looked at him with cold contempt. "Make that one and one half days."
The other man began shaking, and Otto calmed himself. Fear was necessary with the common man, like a kick to start up a recalcitrant machine. But it should not have been so. It would not have been, had it not been for that accursed Spider-Man.
It had been a simple extraction. Ten of Otto's men were to enter the exchange building, proceed to the tenth floor, room 114. They would meet the government agent and persuade or (more likely) force him to give up the package he had been assigned to deliver to Mr. Thorpe, an agent of a separate government branch. Mr. Thorpe had been quietly killed twenty minutes before as he was locking his car. Otto had disposed of the body, entered the car, and had begun to watch the interception through the small cameras installed into the glasses or buttons on his men's clothes. It had gone well--at first. The receptionist had let them by thanks to a fraudulent voice-print Otto had spent ten thousand dollars for. They went up to the office and waited for the gentleman. He had been walking towards the office, twenty feet away, when he had stiffened.
Otto had leaned in closer to the laptop screen, brow furrowing. The agent had faltered--noticeably--and then continued walking past the office.
"He's been tipped off," Otto told his men through the headset. "Detain him before he gets to the elevator."
The men had gotten up, and Otto watched as the agent turned into another office. He was heading for--
"Shoot him," Otto commanded.
He had been shot, but not before he had tripped the silent alarm. "Get out of the building now," Otto commanded. If the package were to be lost...or damaged...
The men went for the elevator--but the alarm had locked it down. "The stairs," Otto said, already exiting the car. They likely wouldn't make it, but perhaps if he met them halfway--
He removed his almost bulky overcoat and uncoiled the snakelike mechanical arms from his sides. These arms that his vulgar, idiot assistants had seen and branded him with a parody of a name: Doctor Octopus. The arms that put on his glasses and lit his cigars also crushed concrete, steel and bone. They were tool and weapon equally--undoubtedly his best innovation. The arms walked him towards the garage stairwell, and Otto listened through his headset as his men removed hidden machine guns from their vest holsters and inserted nose plugs. He had, at least prepared them for any police action.
He had reached the sixth floor when he heard a shatter of glass and startled cries from his men. He gritted his teeth in suppressed fury and accelerated. There were punches and gunfire and galling taunts that Otto recognized all too well. He smashed through the doorway to the tenth floor and sneered. There was his ultimate nemesis, the one figure that refused to fit into any equation and defied any plan with infuriating moral naivete.
"Spider-Man," Otto seethed.
"Ock!" The red-and-blue clad figure shouted almost cheerfully, his tone of mockery and derision, meant to distract and defeat. Otto quickly used his enemy's tactics against him and scanned the room. His men were all unconscious (an enigmatic oversight--the inability of Spider-Man to kill his prey sometimes confused Otto), and the package was--thankfully--intact, and out of the way. And the man nearest it was unrestrained by Spider-Man's webbing. He stirred, unnoticed by Spider-Man.
"I thought it was you in charge of this little get-together!" Spider-Man said--too-loud--and Otto moved in, his arms elevating him and stomping into the flooring. "Too bad I didn't get you anything expensive, but I figured a coupon good for twenty-five years in the slammer would be right up your alley."
"Don't overestimate your talents, wallcrawler," Otto snarled, and threw out one of his arms, swinging through glass panes. Spider-Man backflipped over it just before it would have hit him and retreated into the office Otto had casually remodeled. Otto advanced, and Spider-Man threw out strands of webbing just above him, connecting with the recessed lights in the ceiling. Otto threw up two of his arms in a block, and thrust one out, claws open. Spider-Man curled back, impossibly agile, and the claw arced over him and into the floor. Otto curled his fourth arm around the wallcrawler and threw him threw the building's exterior windows.
Spider-Man threw out two lines of webbing to the building's wall and steadied himself on the side. The quasimodo's freakish powers let him adhere to the side as easily as if he was on horizontal ground. Otto, incensed, scraped two quick thrusts down the face of the building, showering debris on the wallcrawler. Spider-Man thrust out another web, this time in a net, and Otto noted a distant thrumming sound, then a scrape much nearer. He looked back--three of his men were groggily standing.
"Get the package and get out through the stair," Otto grunted, and turned back--barely in time--to catch the boomeranged net of debris. He ripped it apart to see Spider-Man vaulting up the building's side. Otto grabbed the desk and threw it down, missing the wallcrawler, but forcing him to stop and catch it as it fell past him. Otto struck him solidly in the back with a closed claw, and the wallcrawler was dislodged, bits of concrete still attached to his feet. The thrumming was closer, Otto noted, and looked towards it.
It was a news helicopter--foolishly within range. Otto smiled, and icy victory worked through him. He grabbed the tail of the helicopter with one arm, destroyed its propellers with another, and grabbed the pilot and cameraman with the other two. He looked down. Spide-rMan had recovered and--curse him--safely lowered the desk to the street. He was coming back up the building.
"Spider-Man," he shouted, "use your petty abilities to uphold those flagging morals. You recall this scenario, I trust!"
"Ock, no!" the wallcrawler entreated, and Ock threw the cameraman and pilot in opposite directions--
--and dropped the helicopter.
Spider-Man lept and ran up the building, looked left and right, and jumped back, firing two lines of webbing in either direction. The left thread caught the pilot, and Spider-Man hastily made his end of the line into a ball, then released. The pilot fell fifteen more feet before the balled end of the webline spun around a jutting flagpole, held, and stretched him slowly to the ground. The right line caught the cameraman just as the helicopter hit Spider-Man dead on. The wallcrawler threw the cameraman high above him, then slung another two webs past the helicopter and hit the building. Spider-Man arced to a stop on the side, and, impossibly fast, grabbed the helicopter's tail a scant five feet from the sidewalk, let it down undamged. The cameraman finished his ascent and began to fall. Spider-Man spun web after web, making layers of netting that the cameraman fell safely into, his fall gently broken.
All this was told to Otto later, of course. He had turned immediately after dropping the helicopter and made his way to the stairs, his men already ahead of him with the package. Otto was at the third floor when he heard the thwip sound characteristic of Spider-Man's webs and turned. The fool had tried to form a rear assault, dropping straight down at him after apparently going back up to the tenth and entering the stairwell.
Otto clapped two arms together with Spider-Man--almost--in between. The wallcrawler had let go and was a mere five feet away. Otto tried to smash the spider before he could get close, but too late. The wallcrawler had jumped at him and--impertinence!--punched him in the face. Otto fell, hit his head against the wall, and blacked out.
He had awoke in police custody, too groggy--and his arms too far--to mentally summon his weapon tools, and was led slowly and laboriously to this holding cell. It had taken three days from the aborted theft to imprisonment.
All thanks to the interfering webslinger.
This would change, Otto promised himself. Oh, it would change most certainly. He would escape, arms or not. He would erase Spider-Man from the page of calculation...and he could use his newfound package. The police had him, but not his trophy. And that would make all the difference.
The time limit ended, and Otto discovered that Larson had a family and was having a rather covert affair with the warden's daughter. He also had considerable files on the warden and the other guards, apparently blackmail worthy.
Never mix business and pleasure, Otto smiled to himself, then rapped the bars of his cell. "Guard!"
Larson turned his stupid, cow gaze towards Otto. Otto smiled.
"I'd like to make my phone call," he said.
"No," Larson belched. Filth of a man. Otto grimaced with suppressed irritation as well as disgust.
"Because?" Otto asked. Being reasonable was a nuisance, but often a necessary one.
"I'm not in the mood," came the lethargic reply.
"Take stock in your position, Larson," Otto said, a hard edge coming into his tone. "Remember who I am."
"Yeah, you're a loser," Larson sneered. "Just a thug like everyone else here--caged up."
Otto gritted his teeth.
"Without those tentacles, you'd just be another fat geek," Larson continued. "Another hood Spider-Man beat into submission and tossed in here."
"I have the greatest scientific mind of any generation, you fool," Otto snarled.
"Yeah, and look where it got you--here."
"You take me to the phone," Otto warned, "or I'll sue you. For violation of my rights as a criminal."
Larson sighed, then got up, unlocked the cell, and led Otto to the phone. Otto made a call.
"Yes," Otto said. "I'll need you. About three weeks, I should say, but plan on two. Do not be late. Oh, one other thing, look over my case tonight. My guard Larson has harassed me, I'd like to see if I can bring charges against him."
He hung up, and Larson snorted. "You and your fat lawyer gonna sue me for callin' you fat?"
"That wasn't my lawyer," Otto smiled, "that was my assassin. Your daughter is going to be hit by a bus this evening at 5:03. There is no chance of cancellation."
"You son of a--!"
"I know you have files on the other guards and the warden," Otto seethed, delighted at this beast's shock and helpless squirming. "Give them to me after dinner is served. Two other points. I'll need unlimited phone calls from now on. And if you do anything foolish--which is to say, warn anyone or act suspiciously, your wife will meet her untimely end. If you continue to resist, evidence of your affair will be leaked to the warden and I'll issue orders to have you beaten just enough to keep you alive. There will not be another warning."
The guard trembled in hot rage, quite the contrast, Otto thought, to his clear, cold control. Otto turned to go, then stopped.
"Bring me a box of cigars, also, as well as something to light them with," he said, as an afterthought.
"I'll kill you," Larson spat.
"No, you won't," Otto replied. "And we both know it."
Otto went back into his cell. His roommate stared at him, white-faced in fear.
Otto smiled.
