Chapter 7: Otto Octavius

A/N: Yeah hi. I just found out that the movie Iron Man is based in California while I always thought it was in New York, where Tony Stark built Stark Tower. Thanks for that aragthi. So for the sake of this fic, lets assume that the Stark Compound is in New York and they just build Stark Tower in its place later.

Chapter 7:

July 7th, 2010:

It was a month after the events at Stark Compound that I had a visitor. Yeah.. I was shocked too. People don't usually visit me. And Bernard very rarely sends people to me for a business meeting. He's usually the one to handle those things. I'm not the socializing or business savvy kind of guy. It was fishy to be honest. Turns out I was right to be suspicious. It was Dr. Otto Octavius.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me Mr Osborn. I assure you, you will have your mind blown today." He starts off. Wow. Such a good talker.

"You're welcome, Dr Octavius. And call me Harry. Mr Osborn reminds me of my dad and I don't need that kind of anxiety in my life right now." Yup. Guilt trip from the beginning. What can I say? My 2019 humour came with me. I smile at him to reassure him.

"Call me Otto then." He then goes on to tell me about his project with the miniature sun for free energy. Honestly, once Tony Stark came out with his mini arc reactor everyone wants to get into the Energy business.

"Well that's fine. And how are you going to stabilise the fusion reaction?" I question him needlessly. I couldn't let him know that though. He then tells me about his arms a lot. He's really proud of them.

"It's an AI? Right next to your CNS? Is there any chance of them messing with your mind?" I'll have to break it to him really slowly why I think that's a bad idea.

"Well.. yes. But you see I designed an inhibitor chip so that I remain the one in charge. All the time." He reassures me. I'm still not convinced. He's gonna take the tritium fuel from me. I'm gonna basically sponsor a small sun. So yeah I'm asking questions. I look at the report he's prepared for this and read it.

"The containment field is good. Maybe a little more intensity would help. You made the arms resistant to electric as well as magnetic interference. That's good. But there's a few problems. Firstly your report didn't mention anything about the chip being resistant to any of those. Secondly, even if it's protected from Electric and magnetic fields the chip might just fry if you get too close to the sun or if the sun gets too close to you." He's shaking. I don't know if it's anger or fear. I'd be pretty angry if a teenager tells me my experiment is wrong.

He wipes his hands on his pants and looks at me. I can see that he's holding his tears back. "Mr Osb- Harry. Please. It's my life's work. I want to make it work to make our world a better place. When this works our whole lifestyle will change. Please think about it." At least he's passionate.

I think about it for a while. While the experiment is a guaranteed failure on its current path, we could probably make it work. I look at him and say, "Otto. As it is now, it won't work. There's just too many variables we know nothing about. No one's ever done this before. Before a public showing lets start with a smaller scale sun and observe it for close to an hour or 2. We'll see if the Sun is stable and if so, what happens on the outside. How will the heat affect your arms. We'll make a spare inhibitor chip, same specs, and see if it can tolerate the prolonged exposure to the sun. I'll cover those costs. If it works then we'll gradually increase the Sun's size and take more readings. We have tritium to spare. Not much but its enough. After that we'll talk about a public showing. Alright?" At least this way if the experiment fails and he turns from Dr Octavius to Dr Octopus then it won't be public and my company won't be dragged through the mud. Also I could take care of him then and there.

Otto starts crying and I can see that he's relieved that I'm not outright rejecting the experiment. I would have but then he might do it just to spite me and then its a repeat for Spider-Man 2. Better the evil you know and all that shit. He controls himself and stands up. Great, now I gotta stand up too. I stand up with him and he looks at me, still in tears.

He says, "Thank you. You won't regret this. I'll go and tell my wife. We will have to do some more calculations for the smaller scale models but it'll be fine. Again, thanks a lot."

We set up a date for the practice run at my lab so that I can have Siri keep an eye on the process. Plus she'll get the schematics for those mechanical arms for me, which is a bonus.

July 15th,2010

A few days later we do the scheduled experiment. We, meaning Peter, me, Otto, Bernard, Rosie and one of the lab technicians from Oscorp are the only ones there. The techie is there only for the handling of the machines and so that this seems like an Oscorp operation rather than a 'Harry Osborn' operation. It's the first time so many people have been in my private lab. Siri was excited to meet them. Otto got a hell of a surprise when he found out that I programmed her when I was 14. Hah! He probably thought I was just a spoilt rich kid with no knowledge other than how to throw my money. I loved his reaction when Siri showed she's capable of emotions when she insulted Otto for assuming those things about me. As a fellow nerd, he took it how I expected him to. He laughed out loud and looked around in wonder. An AI showing emotions is no small thing.

We start the experiment and it's all going good for the first two hours. The spare inhibitor chip is stable. Both Siri and Otto are keeping an eye on the EMF readings as well as the chip. Things start to go wrong after we start increasing the size of the sun. After the size of the sun exceeds the size which Otto was aiming for the chip goes haywire. Thankfully it was not on his spine at the time. We shut down the experiment and I look at him. Poor guy looks so sad. His entire life's work and it would have been down the drain because he tried to be greedy.

I go towards him and slap him on his face. "OTTO! Giving up already? You're a fucking scientist! You know the problem. Go solve it! Make the chip different. Out of tougher material. Reinforce it twice over. I'm sponsoring it man! Go to town with it. Nobel prize man! Just have a few roadblocks to cross." He wipes his eyes and looks at me thankfully.

Truthfully tritium is very rare. But a chance like this won't come again so I had bought more from different sources. It cost me 5 million dollars but that's like a few drops for my 4 Billion dollar company. One gram of tritium could probably fuel a sun for close to 5 years before it goes critical. So yeah. I'm not afraid to spend that money.

Otto smiles at me and first hugs his wife. He says, "Thanks for questioning me. If I had tried it directly in front of people I might have tried to impress them and ruined everything. The loss of life would have been phenomenal. Thank you."

"You're welcome Otto. Just make me money and we'll call it even eh?" We laugh at that. Peter starts asking Otto questions about the setup which he happily answers. Rosie mouths 'thank you' to me and joins Peter and Otto's conversation.

We have some food and then return to talking business. I manage to convince Otto to take a break for 2 days before tackling this problem. Peter asks to join in to help him with the calculations so I hire him too. What's the use of being rich if you can't hire your friends for a higher salary?

A few days later we have a new inhibitor chip which could theoretically take twice the amount of heat that the first one fried at. After trying it once again, it proves to be true. For the real showing we decide to increase the intensity of the containment field just to be safe. The journalists were not allowed within 50 feet of the setup so as to prevent any metal items feeding the sun more as well as for safety reasons. The showing went perfectly. Nothing went wrong. Otto Octavius keeps his mind. The sun doesn't blow up and just like that I prevented one of Spider-Man's worst opponents. Also Otto gets nominated for a Nobel Prize. Clean Energy Bitches!

I immediately get into a contract with him for the permission to use the Sun as a power source at my factory. I had to hire a few people specifically to work as the caretaker of the reactor to prevent it from getting out of control. I also had to spend a lot of my money on security so as to prevent infiltration. Most of the coding was done by me, so anyone trying to break in will take at least 15 minutes. Which is enough time to send someone there.

Plus I also got the specs for Dr Octavius' metal arms. They will help me with building my own metal arms like the ones on Iron Spider Suit. All in all, life was good.

September 19th, 2010:

I've been going to college for about 2 weeks now. The classes were good, a little bit slow for me, but I needed the degree so I sit through it while reading higher level stuff. I'll skip levels later. I just want to enjoy my college life. The company was going great. There were a few troubles, but Bernard handled it. I had Siri tasked with looking out for Emil Blonsky and General Ross in Harlem. It'll take me 15 minutes max to reach Harlem from Manhattan, where my house is.

I had already made preparations to deal with Ross. I had hacked into the Army servers and found any dirt on Ross I could find. I then followed Ross to his home using cameras, broke into his house and searched for anything hidden. After copying his personal computer data and scanning any important documents I could find, I go to the next location. His storage unit. There I find a treasure trove of information.

So I find out that technically, the Hulk was Ross' fault. Firstly he lied to Banner about the nature of the experiment. Banner was told that he was testing a serum to make humans immune to Gamma radiation. Then he sabotaged the experiment so that he could observe how Gamma radiation reacts with the super soldier serum and enhance it. He literally made the Hulk. And when Hulk refused to bend to his will, Ross had Banner declared a terrorist so that he could cut Banner up and find out how to make Hulk weaponised. He couldn't control one Hulk and he wanted an army of them. People are so dumb sometimes. He also did those crimes and kept a record of them too?

I copy everything I can, snap pictures of all the records and then get out of there after restoring everything before anyone notices the hacked cameras in this whole area. I love Siri. Now when Abomination enters the ground, I'll be ready for Ross. There'll be no Sokovia accords in this universe. Even if they come to be, it'll be because the Avengers want it to be there.

Getting home I create a package with all the information and create three hard copies of everything I got on Ross. After the Abomination matter closes up I'll send it all to as many news agencies as I can. I wanted to ruin his whole life. Why, you may ask? Well if he finds out that I've taken a form of super soldier serum, then he won't hesitate one second to declare me a terrorist and try to replicate the Oz-2. Not taking a risk in that area.

The next day I started up a routine. I woke up at 5 AM, worked out in my gym for 2.5 hours and then left for college after freshening up. My classes start at 9 AM and run till 3, or till whenever I decide to skip class. I then go meet up with either Peter or Gwen. Or I join Bernard at Oscorp to learn how to handle being the CEO. He had decided to make me CEO after my 21st birthday. That is July 14th,2013. So about 4 more years to go. Then there are the nightly patrols as Black-Spider. God I still hate that name. I tried to name myself in front of fans. But they had their mind fixed on Black Spider.

I spend the next few days following the same routine. Other than a few muggings, nothing much interesting happened.

It was September 25th, me and Peter were doing our weekly joined patrol, just chatting. Peter's been bugging me to date someone.

"What about Gwen? She's nice. She's smart too. And above all she's an amazing human being. What's wrong with dating her?" He asks me. You mean other than the fact that you'll end up dating her someday? And that she likes you right now?

"She's a friend, Peter. Nothing more. And I don't have time for dating. There's more important stuff coming. I got a business to learn, NYU takes up most of my time. And that's not even counting our Spidey business. Frankly, I'm good being alone for a while." Its not the first time we've had this talk. Ever since MJ had accepted him being Spider-Man he had tried talking me into a relationship with Gwen nearly every day.

"Okay fine, I'll ask her out. Just don't bug me again. Dumbass" I say after he asks me about Gwen for the 7th time that night.

"See, was that so hard? Jerk." Nothing else happened that night. At least not where we could notice. I already had Siri keep an eye out on the Police radio so we could go whenever we are needed.

It was 2 weeks after that night that I see the news regarding the rumours of a 'Giant Green monster' causing untold destruction at Culver University and fighting with the American Army. I obviously, hack into the CCTV cameras and watch the entire events occurring. Emil Blonsky is also there dodging Hulk's attacks as fast as he can. After those events were covered up by the Army, I add the original video to my 'Ruin Ross Package'. It clearly shows the Army provoking Bruce Banner and then him turning into the Hulk.

After that, I am ready for a fight. I take a medical leave from College, ask Peter to be ready, and spend every hour of the day when I'm not working out just watching the security camera footage. I had live footage from every security camera in Harlem and running a facial recognition software in Bruce Banner, General Ross and Emil Blonsky.

As soon as I see Bruce and Betty enter Grayburn College to meet with Dr Samuel Sterns, I suit up.

I call Peter, "Yo Pete, suit up and get to Harlem, Grayburn College. A giant Monster is about to break Harlem." I cut off the phone call without waiting for his answer. I had to be fast and keep his attention on me and not the bystanders or the military while he waits for Hulk to come. Should be fun, right?