Louise wasn't home when Jim got back, something he was glad for. The father didn't want to let his little girl see the blood that he was covered in. He'd told her that this sort of thing would no longer happen, that no longer would Louise come home to see her dad battered and bruised.
But it had always been a lie.
Jim placed his coat on a rack, only yelling back a response to his wife when she yelled hello to him. Instead of going to meet her, Jim went towards a bathroom under their stairs. It was a small cramped room barely containing a sink, a toilet, and a shower inside.
The father wasn't very hurt, just a couple of bruises, the real reason he needed to be in here was to wash off other people's blood from his fists, from his face and to let him change into a clean set of clothes that Jim had kept here in case of emergencies like this.
Jim could hear the sound of the front door opening, the sound of footsteps hitting the ground lightly telling him who had come in even before he heard their voice.
"Pop, Mom!" Louise yelled out, her voice a tone that set Jim on edge. The kind of false cheer that just didn't fit with his daughter's attitude most of the time. It didn't help the man to get over his current dour mood. "I'm back home!"
That line caused Jim to glance at his watch, noting the time was early in the morning, making the last time he'd seen his daughter the day before. Meaning she was out all night… and came home clearly upset.
Without further notice, he got changed into fresh clothes as quickly as possible. Practically running out of the room with a frown on his face so fierce that lions would whimper in fear at the mere sight of him.
"Louise," he said, while into the living room where both his wife and little girl were sitting on a couch. Jim made sure to keep his voice low and soft despite the rage he'd been feeling. If Louise was upset about something, it wouldn't do "What do you mean that you're back home…?"
Louise just sighed, turning to her other parent and pointing back towards Jim as if this was proving some imaginary point.
"I thought you told him?" she asked her mother, crossing her legs while leaning back into the coach as interacting with Jim was exhausting. "Mom, I so can't deal with this right now."
"Don't you be talking like that to me, Louise Mary O'Reilly" Jim's wife growled, her face frowning at Louise as she leaned in closer to the girl. It was then that the woman did something that the man hadn't expected from her. "But maybe your father could explain where he was all last night? Would that explain why he doesn't know where ya been?"
The two turned to Jim, frowning so sharp that they could cut diamonds with their lips. The only male figure in the room could feel the tension rise in the air like he was being judged as a hypocrite.
"Hey, I was just checking," Jim spoke, his hands raised in surrender. "She's an adult, not like she needs my permission to go out all night. I was only asking."
"But not answering," Louise responded, her eyes glaring sharply up and down his form. Search for something that would break the man's calm exterior. "Where were you last night, Pop?"
He stumbled in his words, causing him to stammer slightly under the raw unimpressed stares of his family. Jim was hoping that he could deflect away from this line of thought but it seemed that his daughter was far too smart for that sort of trick… anymore.
"I was called in by my new boss, had an errand that he wanted me to run," The O'Reilly patriarch shrugged, keeping his eyes on his daughter as to not give away any sign of weakness. "It was further than I thought it would be so I just crashed in the office."
Wesley had set up Jim with a cozy cover as head of security for a small firm that the true boss had acquired through more legitimate means that usual. Given him both a good excuse to be beaten and to be out of his own home for long periods of time.
It also gave him his own office.
"Was there a break-in?" Louise asked, her eyes focusing on a spot on his knuckles that while clean of blood still had rather cut skin.
"Ah, yeah but it was only some kid," Jim replied smoothly, perhaps too smoothly if Louise's eyes somehow managing to narrow even further was a sign but his little girl didn't bother to call that out. "Got cut when the kid jumped the wall and I tried to chase after him. Boy didn't get to steal anything, even if he did manage to get away. So the boss was more than happy with the result."
It was a smoke lie, one that he didn't even need to come up with, other than the situation itself, of course. You see mainly Jim's boss was happy with how the last night's job went even if he would've rather it done with less notice. Fisk wasn't ready yet for even the criminal underworld to know that he was planning for a big play in the near future.
"Huh," Jim's wife leaned forward the grey of her brown hair cascading down her bare back as her revealing top was on full display, it was the woman's usual style. Something that a girl much younger than her would wear going out for the night. "That's good, a kid isn't too dangerous?" she said as if she was asking a question but rather than waiting for a response to that, she continued on with more. "He didn't have a knife, did he?
"Mom, if he had a knife, Pop's old ass would have more than just a few knuckle scratches," Louise sighed, throwing her mother an exasperated look. The father was a bit insulted that his own daughter seemed to think that some kid with a knife could take him out but Jim wasn't in the mood to get into an argument with anyone right now.
"Now that we've got where I was out of the way, let's move onto where you were the whole night?"
Louise turned her head down, her eyes staring at Jim's feet as if it was some kind of bullseye that the girl was about to hit with a cannon. Her cheeks were so red that if the color was any richer then he would've thought that she'd done her make-up badly.
"I was at… Pat's."
Jim didn't speak, he just waited for his daughter to continue, to elaborate that point on with other names. Perhaps even mentioning how she had other friends that also stayed there the night but it never came. When Jim was finally ready to express his displeasure with the idea that his daughter was staying overnight at a man's apartment, that was when his wife intruded once more.
"There's an innocent guy if there ever was," She giggled, something that caused Jim to glare at her. "Oh come on, Jim," The woman continued, having noticed the glare and found much amusement from it. "The guy is barely a predator, kid couldn't hurt a fly, can't even bring himself to shout a dog off him… worried about scaring the creature."
She was referring to the time that Pat had met Louise and her mother on a walk in Central Park, the young man wanted to see the sights of such a large park. Something that he didn't have much experience if his amazement was anything to write home about. While there a labrador decided that it liked his shoes, and tried to run off with them.
Pat wasn't very good at trying to get them back from the dog.
"Sam," Jim responded to her, speaking her name for the first time of the day, his tone stern. "I don't care if the kid's a living saint or not, I'm just not comfortable with the idea of Louise spending the night alone with some man. She could at least invite another friend."
The woman shared a look with each other, but unlike usual it wasn't one of annoyance or even anger, which were the typical responses Jim got whenever he made statements like that. No, it was instead a shared expression of worry, of an awkward anger one wouldn't have when they've only heard something stupid.
"What?" Jim asked slowly, his eyes shifting from one to the other hoping one of them would break first.
"See… it's not me who we should-" Before Louise could finish that sentence, his phone rang, the loud buzzing cutting the girl off before she could get to the meat of the conversation. Normally when Jim was talking with people who were using such serious tones, he'd ignored it but he knew from the ring tone alone who this was.
And you didn't ignore Wilson Fisk when he called you directly.
"I'm sorry, gotta take this," Jim explained standing up and walking out of the room as fast as he could. The father walked all the way to the kitchen, his ear pressed up to the phone while his free hand hit the answer button.
"Mr. O'Reilly," Fisk said the words in his own typical fashion, he was constantly out of breath. "I regret to inform you that some of my contacts have discovered that your former associates have put a bounty for you, only twenty-thousand, they're not interested in having you dead… yet," Jim felt his heart leap into his chest, even though he knew that this could happen, he hadn't expected it so soon. "But I have need… of your services in the future. So just in case of any unforeseen obstacles, I shall send you to my tailor, prepare for Wesley to pick you up tomorrow morning."
With those words spoken Wilson Fisk hung up, causing Jim to let out a sigh, one that was more from regret than from relief. Fisk wasn't someone that liked to talk to underlings, at least not for more than a few simple words. The fact that he had spoken directly to him at all, told O'Reilly more than one thing.
Jim rubbed his jaw, scratching his chin with enough force that there was an audible noise as his nails made contact with his beard.
"Pop?" Louise spoke, causing her father to jump in shock at her rather sudden appearance in the kitchen. "You okay?" her face was shifted into a deep frown, one that only showcased concern. "You look like a ghost just popped out of the wall and attacked you… it's not Grandpa is it? Back from the dead to haunt you for taking all of his money?"
"What?" Jim blinked, taken aback by that rather odd non sequitur Louise just shown his way. "Your Granpa's still alive and money? Guy's not got a penny to his name? What are you talking about?"
"Could've just died," The young girl smile, the rather dark attempt at humor now apparent to her old man. Jim chuckled slightly, not because the joke was funny but because it at least worked at taking his mind away from the news he'd just received. "Then the money would've came from the life insurance."
"Well, I wouldn't worry about that," The father shook his head, placing his phone down on the kitchen counter with a nonchalance that should've only existed when a parent's child didn't have sticky fingers. "Me Dad's probably going to outlive all of us at this stage."
It was then a thought entered his head, something else that could distract him from the mistake he had made yesterday in trying to warn Sean. What was she going to say not a minute ago?
"So what were you going to say earlier?" he asked, walking around his young girl and reaching into their fridge to grab a cold drink. "Sounded pretty dang important."
"Dang? Really, Pop?" Louise rolled her eyes at him, leaning back onto the counter and slyly sliding the phone into her pocket. "It was about Pat… "
When she trailed off this time, Jim couldn't help but feel the air start to thicken from the tension that was building. He turned around to face her once more and her eyes were looking to the ground, giving off the vibe that while not ashamed, Louise wasn't sure if she should tell me whatever it was.
"Look… if something happened," he laid his hand on her shoulder, giving her the softest smile that he could. "You can tell me, I would never judge you."
"It's not about me," she responded, still acting much too meek for his daughter but then Louise looked back up to Jim with a sad expression, one that the man never liked to see on her face. "Pat was investigating some blackouts, found a lead, went to talk to her and-"
It was then that Louise went into detail, though talking so fast that Jim needed to tell her to slow down to elaborate on some parts but eventually Jim managed to get the idea that she was truly trying to get across.
"And you're saying that his reaction about this is subdued?" Jim asked, deciding to try and cut towards the part of the story that seemed to bother the girl the most. "I'd expect him to be really angry."
"So would I!" Louise threw up her hands, exploding with emotion and motion that knocked Jim's hand off her shoulder, which was something the father was more used to seeing from her than the rather dour mood she'd been displaying prior. "But I guess since it didn't work on him," she frowned, shoving her arms under her armpit. "Pat just doesn't get that the woman was trying to-"
"Let's not say that out loud," the father interrupted her, placing his hand once more on her shoulder. "It's only working you up more. How about I have a talk with him? See if I can't get him to open up, maybe bring it up to Ben."
That seemed to actually calm her down, Louise sagged down and closed her eyes.
"Thanks, I'm just a bit worried that he's holding in his rage-"
"-and with his power… imagine just what kind of carnage he could unleash if he was to break."
(Pat Doyle)
"Jam Donut," I stared at the thing before taking a bite out of the pastry with great gusto. The jam exploded across my lips, causing me to lick the strawberry goodness, "I love them, thanks Ben!"
We were sitting outside of a cafe, enjoying a quiet lunch while discussing the developments that had been uncovered by the retrieval of Doctor Octavius' personnel files. Since it seemed to be a break breakthrough Ben had decided that he'd treat me to a meal and we'd talk over that.
Ben himself sat at the opposite end of the table from me, his left hand tapping away at the table while his right slowly brought his cup of coffee to his lips. It was a light blend, while a heavy coffee drinker Ben kept the heavier stuff for late nights working.
"Sounds like a dangerous woman," he said, tapping a folder containing the Doctor's files while setting the drink down on top of it. "Especially if not even Tony Stark would keep her on."
There was an insult, though one that I didn't understand at the time.
"I thought he's calmed down since the whole Iron Man reveal?" I questioned, finishing the donut off in a single bite and then wiping my sugary hands off a tissue that was part of the table's arrangement before shrugging at the other man. "I've only heard of one drunken binge, for him that's amazing!"
Ben chuckled with a smile as if he was enjoying my naivety like someone would when they found a puppy biting their tails. He leaned forward, his eyes staring into mine while also humming up a jaunty tune.
"Listen," he eventually told me, wagging a single finger at me. "The man can have the best of intentions, but as his hard-partying last night proves, it ain't so easy to change yourself."
"Hard-partying?" I asked, lifting a brow. "Just when I thought he was turning things around, what did he do this time?"
"Partied in his Iron Man suit," Ben informed, his face much more serious than it had been just seconds earlier. "Apparently his military friend got his hands on one of the other suits, the two briefly fought and then Colonel Rhodes even managed to run off with the thing… according to my sources."
If I had been drinking, this would've been a spite take moment.
"That's worrying," Was my response instead, dragging the file out from Ben's hold. "And hopefully something that I won't have to deal with later."
"What plan on getting into a fight with the US Military?" he whispered to me, trying to keep this part of the conversation away from curious ears.
"Heck no, I'm just worried about mech suits getting passed around to Police Units in the future," I informed him, remembering briefly the stories of military hardware getting passed to such units in my own universe, one where there wasn't the chance of a Hulk dropping in on you. Here, Some Police Units will be chomping at the bit to get their hands on this stuff, especially if the American Government spends as much on their weapons as I think they will. "Things will only escalate if that happens."
From there I realized that we had gotten off-topic, so I brought things back to what started this discussion.
"So from what I've gotten from her profile is that the Doctor's ego has gone through the roof," I said, running through the details out loud with Ben, an exercise that he started with me to help me work through things. The idea being that he'd ask me simple questions or to elaborate on somethings to get me truly thinking about the details and how they connect. "The Blackouts started in her building, though it's likely since they no longer happen in that apartment that the Doc's either shielded the place or has taken them to another building."
"Have you asked around about the times she leaves the building and they intersect with later blackouts?"
"Yeah, none of the other tenants I've asked notice her leaving around the same time blackouts. So I think the most likely idea is shielding the apartment."
"Good and you got any proof other than conjecture?" Ben asked, pointing his finger at me while taking a final gulp of his coffee. "Because remember, we can't print conjecture. Especially since we don't know what she's doing to cause the blackouts."
"Oh," I blinked, surprised by that statement since it was obvious. "She's trying to break through to other dimensions… maybe even another universe."
This time it was Ben's turn to blink, even going as far as to take off his glasses on rub on the bottom of his shirt. The older man only finally started to talk once more after he coughed, then open and shut his mouth several times.
"You know… isn't she a… and not... " Ben trailed off, his eyes searching for something in mine before he sighed. "You know if you weren't standing before me, I wouldn't believe you. So you think that this is the one, that Octavius is the one that brought you here?"
It was my turn to let out a sigh, one that was much heavier than the one Ben had let out. It would've been so simple if that was true if this woman was the one to have brought me here.
"I don't think so," I shook my head, letting the finger on my right-hand twirl around the wood grain of the table. "At least not on purpose and even that wouldn't explain my powers."
"I've said before, it mightn't be connected."
It was something that Ben brought up early to me when I'd arrived to this world, that it was possible that my powers and my arrival to this world weren't connected. The only real issue was that I never really believed it, unless I'd gotten the powers before arriving here and just didn't remember it but that seemed far too convenient for my liking.
"Maybe," I said instead of revealing to Ben what I really was thinking. It wouldn't do me any good to get into an argument with the man. "But that's what the next stage of my plan is for!"
"Really, you've actually made a plan?" There was a massive chuckle from the man since he knew that the previous plan I had in getting information was just straight asking for it.
I feel that he won't be impressed with this one either.
"I play to her ego," With my hands out wide and my eyes close, as if I was Randy Orton, proud of myself far more than I probably should be. "She seems into me, I go in with a hidden camera, Louise will be remotely viewing and taking a few still pics along with a video. I just need to have her show me her experiments, tell her that it… will… "
"Turn you on?" Ben grinned, chuckling once more and causing me to light up bright red, at least from what I could tell from the heat rushing up my cheeks.
"Y-yeah."
"I don't know," Ben spoke, his hands waving to catch my attention proper. "Sounds risky if the woman really is as smart as she says."
"Come on, she's off her rocker," I replied, grinning as I leaned forward slightly. "That's gotta take some of those IQ points down, and she's horny for… The P."
With my own thumb pointing at meself at the end of that sentence, Ben couldn't help the barrage of laughter that came out of his mouth.
"Okay, Cassanova," he said, once calming down from his fit but not before he knocked his fist against his chest, trying to cause pain in an attempt to stop it. "But please remember that this is the woman that tried to drug you. You don't know how strong some of the stuff the Doc's got access to is nor what drinking some of that would do to you."
Oh, allergic reactions. Hadn't actually thought of that; in fact, now I wondered what it would be like to drink milk. I'd been allergic to it before arriving here, a certain protein in it anyway. It was likely that I'd gotten over it, it wasn't uncommon for someone with my specific allergy to grow out of it.
But testing that wasn't something that I wanted to risk at any stage of my life.
Milk was far too evil for me to ever take that chance.
Suddenly, I felt the air shift, the ground starting to crackle and burst with noise. My reaction speed, far above human norms, allowed me to grab Ben and move a few meters to the left while a pair claws erupting from the concrete, destroying the table we had been sitting at but only showering tiny chunks on the innocent bystanders.
"Well, that's earlier than I would've thought," I grumbled, waiting for the familiar form of Doc Ock to raise from the hole in the street. But instead what I got were a metal sphere with a single red eye glaring down at me attached to four tentacles with the claws at the center of a rather chrome looking body.
"Jesus!" Ben yelled out, reacting as a normal person would to a robot coming out of the ground. "We need to get out of here!"
"Yeah… " I trailed off walking away from the man and watching as the robot turned to keep me in its sight, "Not going to work for me."
I threw my jacket off and started to unbutton the top of my shirt, revealing the blue sports top I'd been wearing underneath and slipping on a blue mask.
"So party time?"
The glaring red shot out a beam at me, one that I was forced to take head-on, in lieu of letting the innocent people around me getting hit by it. With my left palm, I shielded myself from the beam striking my chest, letting it instead grind against the palm and feebly try to push me back.
"A repulsor?" I couldn't help but question out loud. It was a cool weapon type to use, from what I could remember from the Iron Man animated series that is, having either two modes or two types. One being a non-lethal concussive style thing, something that would only push things away with large doses of force, and the lethal one that was closer to a laser, cutting through things. With my durability and strength, it was hard to tell what variation I was dealing with right now.
My contemplation of what kind of repulsor this was left me wide open to one of the robot's claws slashing down at me. Once more I was fast enough to move before it was able to hit me, letting the beam strike the spot in the ground that I'd been standing on.
"Oh," I waggled my finger at the bot, grinning madly. "So close, try again."
Using the seconds that I had before the robot tried something else, my eyes scanned the robotic tentacles with as much of a zoom function that I may as well have been using a microscope. It wasn't long before I noticed something really odd.
"Stainless steel?" Before I could regain my bearings, my ears picked up the sound of the servos whirling up. This gave me just enough time to respond so I could grab one of the claws mid-swing and tear off the blade portion.
Then I threw it right into the single eye of the robot, causing it to collapse in a boneless heap.
"Huh," I took a look around, glancing at the bewildered and frightened people who were staring at me and the robot as if we were about to explode at any moment. "Thought that would take longer."
Which was the moment that two more sets of claws burst from the asphalt around me and caught me in their grip. The metal groaned as it pressed against my body, cutting the clothes but not having the ability to get through my skin.
"Spoke too soon, didn't I?"
(Olivia Octavius)
"YES! I HAVE CAPTURED THE TARGET!" Liv yelled out, throwing a hand up into the air and taking her hands from the controls. "Though, I'm now out of kitchenware," she said, thoughtfully scratching at her scalp while peering over to the empty draws laid out on the floor. "Looks like it's plastic folks for me for the next few weeks."
This is what happens when you need robots quickly and already spent your funds on other projects prior to this.
In front of the woman sat a large computer monitor, showcasing the capture of the now masked Pat Doyle in between the claws of two of her robots. In her manic glee, the woman didn't even notice how unconcerned the man was, just that she had succeeded in capturing him.
"Now I can verify the odd readings of this young man my equipment gave me yesterday," she muttered, continuing to grin as the Doctor weaved her fingers together like she was Mister Burns from the Simpsons. "Not to mention that trick he did to defend against the repulsor."
That was something Liv just needed to know.
Without waiting for anything else, she typed away at the controls, signaling for the robots to return to her, not to the apartment mind you, but to a lab/base that she'd set up near a sewer access tunnel. Hopefully, that would mask her involvement long enough to… dissect the body.
That would give all the materials that she'd need to conduct experiments.
Doctor Octavius hummed as she stood to her feet, very slowly making her way around the room to pick her things. A coat, her normal glasses, not her goggles as she usually wore, and a pair of sneakers with red stripes.
"Oh… the things that I do for the-" Whatever speech the woman was about to give to the empty room was interrupted by series loud, rushed knocks to her front door. Liv rolled her eyes and sneered at the air as she turned around and made her way towards the object that had offended her.
There were more knocks, these far louder than the last set before Liv ever reached the door.
"Coming!" Dr. Octavius yelled, holding back the groans the woman could feel trying to escape from her throat. When she finally opened the door the scientist couldn't manage to keep noise inside and groaned out; "Oh, it's you."
The man's name was Grant, a tall enough man, good looking, well built. But so obviously a spy that it made her head hurt. He thought himself so charming too, Liv wasn't sure she'd seen a spy so dumb that they thought their cover as a newlywed would be helped by flirting with the target.
But Grant seemed to think he was charming enough to pull it off and truthfully the Doctor had to agree. He was both charming enough and hot enough to pull off the seduction angle...
… if she hadn't already had his employers hacked years ago and therefore had access to the man's file.
"Hello, Liv," he smiled, his shiny white teeth and chiseled grin sending chills down her body, not due to attraction but instead disgust at his blatant attempt at charming his way into her apartment. "Looks like there's been a fire up a few floors, we've been called out for safety."
The Doctor searched the man over, looking for the signs that he was lying. Not that she expected the spy to be so easy to read, just that this was a lie so easily proven false that she was surprised he tried it.
Since the fire alarm hadn't gone off.
As she raised her right hand to point to the ceiling and mention this fact… the fire alarm actually started to ring out. When Liv looked up briefly and then back to Grant himself, she found him grinning, all sly like as if it wasn't possible that he'd set that up.
But it wouldn't matter if the man and his group were given access to the apartment right now.
"Well… that's bad, I'll just have to make haste out of the building, right?" The rather swift shift in her tone from the first half of the sentence to the second seemed to bother the man but since Grant was getting what he asked for, there wasn't anything he could say to that. Else the spy would only worsen the Doctor's suspicions.
So Olivia left Grant standing in the hall, closing her apartment door but not locking it as she made her way to the nearby stairwell. When she reached the floor below, she pushed a button on her watch… starting a timer.
"That should get rid of those flies," Doctor Octavius giggled, making the rest of the ways downstairs knowing that things were going better than planned. In under an hour, her spy problem will be out of the way. In under five hours though?
Then she'd have a prime specimen and her greatest experiment would commence.
"It's good to be me."
(Matt Murdock)
It wasn't luck that he'd been there for the robot attack, he'd been following the man from the docks for about two weeks. Noticed his rather unique nature after running into him, of course, one would think it's hard to find a man that Matt had never seen the face of but the soon to be Lawyer was an old hand at that…
… given he was blind.
Though it had been only luck that he'd run into the man a few weeks earlier, even overheard that his name was Pat. And today was one of the days that Matt's schedule seemed to coincide with the mysterious vigilante's, something that he had planned on finally using to meet with the guy once more.
But then robots erupted out of the ground, the first getting taken out easily by the blue vigilante but then when a pair arrived and grabbed him from underneath the street. It seemed to be too much for the superpowered man so he was dragged into the sewers by them.
"And I really liked this suit," Matt couldn't help but mumble, digging out the cloth he kept on hand for his half mask and trying it around his face, he'd already been near an alley so it was easy for him to change into his black gear and store his normal clothes behind a garbage bin. Luckily for him, they wouldn't be collected for another two days so Matt could afford to leave his things there.
Without needing to look around for one, Matt was able to find a manhole leading to the same sort of service sewer tunnel that the robots had dragged Pat into, his senses telling him that the two were connected by a passage only a few feet ahead.
Murdock knew that it would be hard to keep up with the robots, their long mechanical legs meant they wouldn't have to worry about slipping or stamina like Matt would but at the same time. The blind man also knew from the sound and shapes of the legs that they'd be slowed down by the small size of the tunnels, especially given that they needed to keep their prey locked down.
In fact, Matt could hear the whirring and clicking of their innards even now, telling him that there wasn't much distance between them. Moving as fast as he could, the blind vigilante sprinted through the tunnels, using all the training he'd been given to move silently, just in case the robots had the capability to hear him coming.
But he also made sure to not go too fast, it wouldn't be good to be caught by running into them before they reached their destination.
There was some light talk echoing from the walls, the sound of Pat attempting to make light conversation with his capturers.
"You know… it's neat being captured by such famous people," he spoke, much to Matt's confusion. "But crime isn't the answer guys, I know the reboot of the War Of the Worlds re-cast you guys and it's made income hard to come by, but that's no excuse for damaging public… and probably private, properties."
There was a chime from one of the bots, something that almost sounded like a response to the man's words.
"Hey now!" Pat griped, his voice flat. "I didn't insult your mother."
Another chime.
This time there wasn't another response till they reached another sewer access point about an hour later; something that Matt could tell only due to the noises from the street that could be heard nearby. There was a clang of metal on metal, the sound of a sliding door opening to reveal a hidden room, one that the blind man hadn't bothered to pay any real attention to.
"You know this isn't more than like a five-minute jog from where I'd been?" Pat asked, the confusion in his voice sounding genuine to my Matt's ears. "Wouldn't a base like somewhere further away be better. Police will be searching for you guys, this close it would be easy to track the stainless steel robots."
There was another series of chimes, this time each robot made their own before Pat responded once more with the air of someone that stubbed their toe lightly rather than having been abducted;
"You can at least try," he whined while Matt pressed his ear against the now-closed entrance to this secret sewer base. "I mean, you don't even have any of those really cool looking electrical balls or cylinders that shoot lighting. What kind of half-arsed secret evil lab have I been taken too?"
Matt had to give his fellow vigilante this at least, Pat was fearless.
It was at that moment that his ears perked up as the sound of shoes hitting against the cold concrete floor started to emit from the secret lab. Whoever this person was, it was a woman, not too tall, not the fittest person he'd ever met but she certainly would be someone that could defend themselves from a mugger.
"Ah, Mr. Doyle," she spoke, using smooth almost flirting tones, tinged with just a smidge of danger. Matt knew that he couldn't wait out here for long, so ran his fingers along the walls, searching for a way in beside the one that had been revealed.
"Ah… kinda hot science lady… good to see you, I'd wave but I'm a bit tied up at the moment."
"Cute," The woman responded, right as Matt found a vent, something that seemed to lead to the inside of the room. It was large, something that told him that this place needed to be kept cool for some reason; which given Pat called it an evil lab would make sense if the equipment needed to be kept below a certain temperature.
"Do you know why I brought you here?" The Robot's Creator spoke, her hand tapping against some rectangular object in her hand. Matt couldn't be sure from this far away if it was a tablet but the reverb that came from it at least seemed to imply that it was.
"..." Strangely Pat didn't respond, a first since this situation had started Matt noted. But the blind man could hear the other man's heart start to race, he could even hear as Pat started to open and close his mouth a few times.
It seems he was tongue tied
"Silence won't stop what's about to happen."
"Well, Doctor… I don't think rape is the best answer for a dry spell."
This caused Matt to pause, and from what he could tell, it also caused the Doctor to pause mid-step. He let the sentence give as much pause as it did the Doctor, instead of shuffling forward with even more urgency than ever, dragging himself up as the vent shifted positions towards the ceiling.
"I'm not going to rape you," her voice shrilly passing through the air. "I'm-"
"-I know that you might think that I want it," Pat interpreted her, causing her stance to tense up, and her feet to squirm in place. "But even for guys, no means no."
Matt barely managed to stop the chuckle that threatened to erupt from his mouth, something that would have revealed his location to the people in the lab. He could imagine that his fellow vigilante was grinning madly… or scared shitless if this wasn't the other man playing around here.
"I'M NOT GOING TO RAPE YOU!" She ended up screaming at the man. This declaration coincided with Matt arriving at the vent cover directly above the woman, waiting for his time to act.
"Oh, thank god," Pat sighed, leaning his chin against the steel of the robot. It seemed that the man had realized exactly what the woman had claimed she was going to do. "I… mean… how dare you!"
"Please," The woman scoffed, her head shifting upwards, causing Matt to gently shift back from the vent cover. It wasn't like he needed to see the woman after all. "I assumed an alien like yourself would've realized that he'd be noticed eventually. Truly this was inevitable."
"Oh I did," Pat admitted brazenly, much to Matt's surprise. "I just didn't expect it to be by some lady operating out of a sewer, thought that it would be the US government," There was a large sigh from the man like he hated speaking about the subject. "Gotta ask though, why do you even need to dissect me? What does that actually get you, Liv?"
"Data on what it takes to survive dimensional travel," Liv revealed, her hands coming up to stroke her robotic creations like one would a dog. "While I've managed to send small mechanical beings through the bleed between universes fine. Any organic material is shredded… then I met you. Your body gives off all the same energy readings that my sensors have read when passing through the Bleed, you're actually tough enough to survive the transition."
"Wouldn't a living subject get you better data?"
"There's some data that I can only get from literally picking at your brain."
It was then that a dead silence dominated through the room, stopping Matt from getting into position for his eventual ambush of the woman. If he moved too much now, then he'd only get himself caught by the woman.
"There… " Pat attempted to speak only to trail off. It was obvious to Matt that the man was buying time, time that the Doctor was more than happy to give the man.
"There what?" she responded, leaning closer to Pat, given the hidden vigilante time between the movement and words to move back to the grate. "Go on, I can tell you're just dying to ask something."
"Haha," the man responded dryly. "What made you shift focus? I'd read that your main interest was cybernetics, not… inter-universal travel?" he said the term like it was a dirty word, something forbidden and not meant to be talked about. Which given that he was apparently an alien, Matt could presume it could be where he's from.
"Oh, why don't I just say divine intervention and leave it at that."
Before Pat could even bother to question what that meant, and Matt could tell he wanted to from heartbeat alone, there was a loud buzzing noise that echoed throughout the room. It reminded Matt of the sound that an electric cooker or stove would make once their timers would run out.
"Left something in the oven?" Pat mocked, then Matt could oddly hear him suck in a large portion of air like the bots were crushing and he needed to gasp for it… but there wasn't a single motor moving from what he could hear, what was he doing?
"Of course not," she scoffed, her steps marking her position for Matt as Liv made her way towards a console, something that seemed to cobbled together from laptop parts mixed with an old office desktop. "It's just phase one is about to start."
"That's your apartment building?" Pat's voice finally sounded truly shocked, so much so that he even let go of the breath he had been holding in.
"Yes, see I'm testing if the building being sent over helps to shield people on the trip, even if it doesn't there's plenty of data to be had from sending over so much material at once," Liv replied to him as if he was asking a question, rather than being shocked.
"My god, you are a mad scientist."
"I'm not mad-"
"-Fine, you're an angry scientist."
"Ignore him, Liv," she whispered to herself, before gathering herself up to speak with a far more sinister tone. "This isn't just about the potential data this experiment will gather but it will also remove those pesky SHIELD Agents that were spying on me."
"Those two were SHIELD Agents?" The captured man exclaimed, sounding more shocked than he'd been about anything else.
"You didn't know?" The Doctor gloated, the glee in her voice vibrating off the walls of the lab. This was a woman that took pleasure in being smarter than all those around if given the chance she'd relish showing it off.
"I knew that they were spies but… " Pat clicked his tongue off the roof of his mouth. "I thought SHIELD Agents would be better at spying, they couldn't even fool me."
"In any case, those Agents will be disposed of in another hour."
It was as she was shrugging that Matt made his move, bursting out of the vent and fling his walking stick right at the woman's throat, before sprinting after it. Sadly for the blind vigilante his senses couldn't warn him in time of the set of tentacles that sprouted out of her back, the first one whacking away his stick while a second tried to impale him.
It was only a miracle that a rogue gust entered the room and flung Matt out of the path, slamming him into a wall.
"What the hell?" Liv whined, stamping her foot on the ground. "I had him."
Before Matt could really think of how he was saved, Pat blew hard on the robots that surrounded him, icing them over before flexing his muscles and shattering his way out of their grip.
"My babies!" The Doctor yelled, something that seemed to have brought a smile to the blue man's lips.
"That's what you get for making them out of stainless steel."
"I was improvising!"
(Betty)
"Well, isn't this an odd place for a kid," Betty snarked, walking around a couch while a rather tall redheaded girl rooted around in the cabinets of Octavius' apartment. The non-SHIELD intruder turned around slowly, almost naturally to Betty's eyes as if she truly belonged here.
Of course, since Betty'd been monitoring the building for a few months now, she knew that this girl had never been here before.
"Well… this is an odd place for someone that lives two floors up to be," The girl responded smoothly, not missing a single beat and even going as far as to smile at Betty. Sadly this meant Betty couldn't afford to let this charade go on much longer.
Her superiors had given her a deadline.
"Right, I don't have time for this," Betty reached into her chest pocket and pulled out a wallet, showcasing an I.D, and badge. "The names Bobbi Morse, Agent working for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division."
"That's a mouthful," The girl replied, tapping her foot along the floor, her body language alone telling the Agent that she hadn't dropped her guard. An interesting response to being told that a government agent was confronting you after you've broken into an apartment.
"Don't believe it?" Morse couldn't help but ask, buying time for the rest of her team to arrive just in case this kid had some trick up her sleeves. Bobbi had heard the rumors about that woman with super strength in Europe or that girl from a few years ago that survived a car crash and came out with the same, so with those two in mind, Bobbi wasn't interested in taking any risks.
"Never heard of that mouthful of an organization," she shrugged, not bothering to say out the full name and stepping a few more feet towards the Agent. From what Bobbi could see, the ripped state of the young girl could make a fight between the two tougher than the girl's age would suggest. "And I've seen enough fake badges that look legit that I don't trust any."
Bobbi couldn't help but groan, it seemed that she'd been saddled with a street smart child burglar. Thankfully for her nerves, the buzzing sound from her earpiece signaled that her companions were just waiting for the all-clear sign.
Which meant that it was much safer to do this.
"What's your name?" Bobbi asked, having pulled out her gun and pointing towards the young girl. There wasn't any sort of nervous reaction, not like one would expect from a teen getting a pistol pointed at them.
"Lois," The clear lie didn't do anything to help with the tension that the woman could feel building up in the room. Like a powder keg, one wrong move and the girl would blow. "So what's an agent like you doing here?"
For just a second Lois's face flinched, revealing that a lot of this behavior was a mask to keep Bobbi from seeing how scared the young girl was. The Agent lowered her gun, though keeping her limb ready to bring it back up.
"I'm asking the questions here," Bobbi claimed, finally taking in the appearance of this Lois in full detail. The girl was too well dressed to be a burglar, at least one that would rob from this apartment. "What are you here for?"
Lois just stared at Bobbi, something that the Agent was more than willing to accommodate. As the door swung open and Grant came walking in, something that caused the youngest person in the room to actually step into a fighting stance.
"Come in at a bad time ladies?" Grant grinned, having taken note of the gun but not bothering to draw his own. "Because I can come back when you've gotten everything sorted out."
"Shut up, Grant," The fellow Agent mumbled, leveling a glare at the man. "Just prep the room for the techies."
"How about this," Lois spoke up suddenly, eyeing Grant like he was dirt Bobbi had dragged into the room. "Quid pro quo, you tell me what you're looking for, maybe I help you and I just leave."
Bobbi glanced around the room, noting that the girl mustn't have been here longer than a few minutes at most. Though the secret agent did find it impressive that Lois had even gotten into the building without her people spotting her.
"Fine," Morse sighed, something that if the groan from Grant was any indication, her current partner didn't agree with. "We're looking into Miss Octavius for dangerous experiments and having a procession of illegal materials."
There wasn't much more Bobbi could divulge to the young girl than those details, her being a civilian and all.
"Well… in that case," Lois nodded her head towards a door, one that once had a steel bolt covering it but now it hung limply in the air. "Might want to check out that door."
Without even being given the order, Grant was already on his way, his own side-arm raised in the air in case of any traps left there by the good Doctor. Slowly he opened the door, his face morphing into something close to utter awe and confusion.
"What the hell!" Grant exclaimed, causing Bobbi to slowly shift positions till she was standing next to him, though keeping the young redhead in her side vision. "Is that a Stargate?"
"Huh," she couldn't help but tilt her head at the sight of a very Stargate-like object, the only difference being that it was segmented rather than being one whole unit, and its size only being around six feet in diameter. "It is."
Sadly for the agents, before they could even attempt to approach or more likely call on tech support to check the device over first. It started to strobe red and lift into the air, spinning around at ever-increasing speeds. Eventually splitting apart and blasting out of a window nearby.
"That can't be good."
"Thanks, Captain Obvious," Bobbi couldn't help but growl, her head popping out of the window to watch as the segments started to circle the entire apartment building. "Here I was thinking the spinning device made by the dangerous scientist was a good thing."
Author's Note: Hello true believers, it is I, Pro-man! And I am here to bring you another chapter from the dept of my inane mind! It will bring together characters that you didn't even conceive of! Or maybe I'm just hyping things up a bit much and you should just take things as they come rather than as I want them.
Also, just a kindly reminder, just because someone says or thinks something, doesn't make it true.
This is a tough chapter to write, but enjoyable all the same. Now we see the mind of Doc Ock in this world, while at the same time getting a tiny hint at why she's the way she is. Don't think that you'll guess why by the way, none of you can because the hint is a very obscure reference to a single sign in a not too well-liked comic.
You'd never guess what, the character's not usually referred to in that way.
This chapter is a little bit under that last in terms of size, it's just how things roll at times. The pacing dedicated that it ends around this point and I ain't the kinda guy to go against that feeling in my chest. Unless others tell me it's a bad idea.298