Brackets just waving "Hi"!

She sighed. She held her phone closer to her chest as she looked back up at the camera, still locked on her. Holding her free hand up in front of her and raising an eyebrow, she contemplated what to do with it. Flash it the middle finger? No, she’d rather save it for Norman. Hm… Maybe she’ll run off with the tech for herself. She grinned at the thought, flashing the camera a wink as she put her palm out in a peace sign, stowing away her phone before turning away and following to the main labs. The camera slowly raised in order to follow her before she disappeared.

Why was it locking onto her if there was nobody controlling it?

“About time you showed up.”

“Mmmh-! Ya-ta-ta-” Octavia heckled, gesturing a shut mouth motion with her hand. “I don’t wanna hear it! Not my fault that this place is a labyrinth that feels bigger on the inside!”

Her head buzzed with noise. Great, the televisions are on, too. Bunch of channels praising Norman.

“And turn those damn TVs off! Norman…” she scowled and covered her ears with her hands. “...What a load of shit!”

Oktavia snickered, bottle in her hand as she reached across the table in front of her to pick up a simple remote, pressing a button to mute the TVs’ audio. Leaning back in a rolling chair she had laid claim to, she gestured to the end of the table.

“Please sit down. I found you a mug I think fits you.”

Octavia pulled her hands away and tilted her head, the other chuckling as she gestured to a green mug with a darker green handle. She furrowed her brow.

EVIL GENIUS.

She rolled her eyes upon reading the red text. Haha. Very funny.

“You sounded oh-so-serious earlier.”

“Oh, this still is!” Oktavia laughed as she poured some of her bottle’s contents into the green mug. “Otto just knew how to party, too. Please, sit.”

“You know I don’t drink.”

“But I do.”

With that statement, Oktavia chugged the rest of her bottle’s contents before tossing it into a nearby garbage can. Octavia sighed.

“One: Get yourself your own cup, it’ll encourage you to pace yourself. Two: What’d you call me here for, anyway? Besides trying to get me hammered.”

“I forget that you get tunnel vision a lot.” Oktavia snickered as she relieved a crick in her neck, reaching under the table to pull out both another bottle and her own mug, pouring herself a cup. “Look behind me.”

What-

Oh.

Her eyes went wide. Strung up on various hooks and strings and dangling from the ceiling, connected to what appeared to be a black vest with exposed wiring, were four long mechanical tentacles, the large talons at their ends noticeably stretching them and exposing flexible fibers through the intricate interlocking plates which opened to accommodate the strain. On the ends of each appendage were four massive, vicious claws, their tips plasticky and clear to expose internal lighting systems, and nestled inside the area of the main claws were four smaller, more dexterous-looking claws with various circular lights between them and in the very center. The creator’s penchant for making things glow was on full display. Both the shell and the softer parts were a shiny black, and with the three sharp ridges that went partway down them with six rows down their sides and five rows on their “top” parts, made them look almost organic. If she didn’t know any better, she could easily have believed that it was less a machine and more a trophy of some kind of beast hunt…

“Priority Support, Version Four Harness.”

She held her head, gritting her teeth from a new pain and stumbling for a few moments. That… came out of nowhere. Against her better judgment, she quickly gulped down the alcoholic contents of the silly cup that her associate had given her. Some means of distracting from that…

"What?"

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Oktavia said as she turned her body and put her other arm over the back of her chair, cup still in hand. “Never thought that I’d actually see it up-close. Shame it had to be for this…”

Wincing, Octavia held her head again, eyes shut tight and leaning over the table, attempting to ride out the headache. She didn’t like drinking, but she knew that she wasn’t a lightweight, and the headache came before she actually took a drink. She kept the cup in her hand as she walked around the table and walked into the dangling tentacles to get a better look at their details. This headache… It feels like something’s up.

“Tonight isn’t your night.”

“No shit.”

“It isn’t mine, either.” she coughed as she found herself stumbling through the dangling robotic appendages. “I’ve just never seen you this mad before. Of all the shit Norman has had you do-”

“You still don’t get it? Do you even know who this place belonged to?” Oktavia spat in her heightened agitation.

Octavia grunted in pain, keeling over and holding a hand to her face, eyes shut tight. She didn’t quite know why she was meandering like this outside of keeping Oman from being tempted to refill her cup. But… It felt almost like she was being drawn somewhere.

“You’re rrright. I d-d-don’t get it.” she slurred through grit teeth. This can’t be the alcohol…

Oktavia huffed, turning around to finish her cup before moving her long hair over her shoulder and pointing to the back of her neck, showing part of a large, angular, black tattoo that was still mostly obscured by her clothing.

“You’ve seen my tattoo, right?”

“Yyyyyeah. Something down your spine?” Octavia replied as she clumsily meandered, stumbling and falling onto her knees while dry heaving.

“Spine. Yes, spine. You know what the spine is important for?”

Octavia’s eyes watered as she slowly opened them and looked up.

“Mmmmmggh…”

“Nerves. Nervous system. Limbs. Tell me, do you know what Otto Octavius was working on?”

Otto Octavius… That name felt familiar. A strange sense of dread. She couldn’t will herself to reply.

“Prosthesis! Replacement limbs! You would have liked him.”

She hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going. She slowly stood up to avoid vertigo while holding her cup with both hands. What… What in the hell…?

“Do you see this?”

Oktavia pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow as she turned back to face her friend. She leaned to the side to look past her slouched partner.

“...And I thought I was just seeing things.”

Sitting in front of Octavia was… Something…

Linework, thin linework, cel-shading, single-tone, hand-drawn single-tone cel-shading. She barely paid any attention to what exactly it was she was looking at. The sheer aura of wrongness exuding from it was nauseating. Its actual contents be damned, she knew a cartoon transposed into reality when she saw it. Who knew that Who Framed Roger Rabbit would be so stomach-churning in real life?

She held her cup up to her mouth to take a sip before quickly remembering that it was empty. She shut her eyes tight for a moment before opening them again. Clearer now. Back to reality. Just what was it that was being… animated in front of her?

It took her a few moments to wrap her head around its actual shapes. Held up by a dark bluish metal rod and simple grey gears was what looked to be a large light blue-grey clamp, the front of it having a circular depression made of a darker blue-grey ring with a muted yellow-green circle within. The sides of the clamp had crooked angled lines on them which seemed to vanish when she wasn’t focusing directly on them. Dangling from the back of the clamp were four long, awkwardly-coiling, near-black artificial tentacles, only their lineart and drawn-on shading being pitch black, with squiggly white lines acting as rings across the width of each tentacle and having grey shading. Each tentacle ended in a black sphere with three claws and similar depressions in their fronts to the front of the main clamp, a ring of orange around a circle of bright yellow as opposed to the clamp’s muted green. The underside of the standing rod, inside of the clamp, looked unsettlingly hostile, lined with spines and angular metal plates.

She wandered around the strange stand to get a better look at its details. It was stood up on a simple circular base similar in color to the clamp, though the stand lacked any further detail, drawn onto reality like the device it was holding up. She kneeled down at the back, looking over the tentacles and their claws, holding out a hand and slowly grabbing hold of one of the tentacle lengths, shuddering as her hair stood on-end. It was…

A sensation. Many different, hard-to-pinpoint feelings, seemingly all mired deep in what she could only reason as television static made solid, but even that felt strangely imprecise, though they all mixed into a feeling of revulsion all the same. Wrapping her fingers around it felt bizarre: Feeling almost flat, though distinctly unlike a piece of paper or running her hand over a flat wall, casting on her hand shadows that were somehow simultaneously soft and clean-edged. She bent her neck and let the tentacle drop from her hand while quietly retching. Just looking at it, any part of it, was… disorienting. That’s it. Disorienting.

Very disorienting.

And proportioned strangely. With the four tentacles dangling from the back, she could tell that it was some bizarre variant of Otto’s technology, but it was both unusually wide and short even without taking into account its sheer artificial-ness. She quickly walked back around to the front and stepped up and into the open clamp in order to compare its size and couldn’t help but grin stupidly as she measured. She was already a gangly six-foot anomaly compared to everyone else she knew, even taller with the thick boots on her feet, but the top of the clamp barely reached past her hips and was much too wide to stay attached if it were clamped around her: Definitely for someone much shorter and stouter. Her grin turned into outright giggling as she noticed something engraved on the inside of the device, prompting her to kneel with her cup held to her chest:

Ver. Spec. Tailored Override Operator Neuroprosthetic Harness.

Strange. Only a few of the letters were bolded for emphasis. T, two O’s, and an N. T, O, O, N…

“Tooooooooon.”

Oktavia raised both of her eyebrows in an unamused expression even though her left eye had lolled closed. Both of her hands were inexplicably twitchy.

“...What?”

Standing back up, Octavia turned back while pointing to the inside of the harness, turning around entirely before awkwardly leaning backwards over the harness and letting her feet slide outwards. Strangely relaxed, unnatural sensations be damned.

“Tooooooon.” she giggled, holding her cup up to her mouth to drink. Right, empty. Looking like an idiot.

An awkward silence filled the air for a few moments before Oktavia sighed.

“...Alright, will you listen to me now?”

Ohm nodded and yawned. Way too late to be doing this…

“Good.” Oktavia sighed, eyes watering as she yawned. “So, do you…”

Her chest hitched and she grit her teeth, rubbing her closed left eye.

“...Wait, do you even know anything about Otto Octavius outside of what I’ve told you here?”

That name still felt strangely familiar to Octavia, pursing her lips in thought for a few moments.

“Rampage. Spider-Man.”

Oman sighed.

“And that’s it?”

“Mmm-hmmmh.”

Oktavia was silent as she planted her face in her hand, shaking her head, though her silence was interrupted by a quick hiss from physical pain. Her chest burned, her whole head stung.

“Before that… He was…” she keeled over for a few moments, heaving, “He was good. Very good. He has… had a common enemy with us.”

Octavia tilted her head as her friend continued.

“Norman.”

"Norman?"

“Yes. The giga-fuckwit. He did what he always does.” she sighed as she slowly pulled her head out of her hand, hand moving into gripping her chair white-knuckle. “He destroyed everything.”

Octavia forced a smile through her grimace. This… uncharacteristic seriousness of her friend’s…

“Yeah, he always does that. What’s new? What’s so…” her voice tapered off and her eyes looked to the side in thought, “...distinct about this? Making you so aggro?”

Silence. A long, awkward, tense silence, broken only by an angry sigh.

“You don’t get it, do you? There’s a reason why nobody’s heard from Otto, of Otto, for a long time.”

She didn’t respond, only keeping notice of her friend’s building tenseness and unopening left eye.

“And now look where we are. What we’re doing. Do you realize what we’re doing?”

She remained silent. She couldn’t think of anything to say, let alone will herself to properly respond. Her hair stood on-end as she intently watched Oktavia turn her head down and loudly sigh while slowly letting go of her cup. Why did her chest feel so tight?

The cup rattled as Oktavia slammed her fist on the table. She quickly got out of her chair, face twisted into a scowl, both eyes wide open and her brows furrowed in fury.

“Otto is dead! We’re grave robbing!”

Octavia was wide awake now, eyes snapped fully open. Otto is dead. Stealing his stuff for Norman. Grave robbing. Oktavia’s agitation made more sense now.

Though it didn’t explain why her nose and mouth were bleeding.

Or why her left eye was green.

Or why neither of them had realized that the tentacles that had once dangled between them from the ceiling were now gone.

“...My head hurts.”

Oktavia’s body twitched strangely and she held a hand to her chest. Octavia simply remained wide-eyed, choked up and unable to force herself to say what exactly she saw was wrong, though her tunnel vision was quickly shattered by the sound of running fluid. Running fluid…? Who’s been following them? And why are they only making their presence known now?

Running fluid… clinking chains? Some kind of gentle overlapping solid sound, almost like someone wearing clothing made of many dangling, layered small plates or scales-

Oh.

Her eyes looked past Oktavia and to the table, her friend slowly turning her head back to match. Simple, intense disbelief was plastered across both of their faces. Somebody was refilling Oktavia’s cup.

Something was refilling Oktavia’s cup. Something familiar. Something too familiar.

Deftly holding a bottle from the bottom with both sets of its claws and pouring the bottle’s contents into her cup was one of the Priority harness’s tentacles, claw tips glowing a bright yellow that also pulsed throughout the fibers and wiring under its plating. It slowed its pouring as her cup was fully filled before lifting the bottle back up and going still, as if it had just noticed that it was seen and was embarrassed at that fact, before another tentacle came and took the bottle from the top to put it away before returning. Its claws were relaxed and pointed towards Oktavia, as if it was looking at her despite lacking eyes, two other tentacles following suit. Her chest burned with painful fire as a realization shot up her spine.

She’s wearing the harness.

They’re attached to her back.

And, crawling up her spine and almost seeming to use her tattoo as a guide up to the base of her skull, the intracranial neural network embedded into her nervous system and worked deep into her brain. On the back of her head, at the base of her skull, embedded a yellow-glowing nodule that sprung to life as it drew blood. Her wide eyes watered, her throat choked up as her whole body seized up.

Octavia’s whole body froze. Her grip around her cup handle slowly loosened to the point of dropping it, yet no shattering followed. The mug was simply raised upwards in front of her face, held up by a cartoony claw whose unnaturalness quickly infected it with bold colors, thin linework, and cel-shading while eating away at its true three-dimensionality. The harness that she was leaning on felt hot. Why does it feel hot?

It burns. Everything burns.

The whole room was consumed by pandemonium as everything started at once. Branching green sparks danced across Octavia’s body as the harness clamped shut around her torso and the ridges down the support rod embedded into her spine, a small chip clipping to the base of her neck. She couldn’t move out of the harness’s attachment point. Both girls yowled in agony, thrashing in pain and overstimulation.

Oktavia’s entire body spasmed and the four tentacles now bound to her nervous system thrashed with her. Spreading from the harness formed luminous yellow veins which pulsated similarly to the tentacles. Yellow sparks burned within her eyes as the iris of her right eye dyed itself green like her left, and her eyes watered with the blurring of her vision and degrading sight quality. The majority of the harness didn’t cling to her body save for the spinal implant, though with her torso stretching with a chorus of cracks from her spine and ribs to accommodate for the new growth, it didn’t need to tighten itself. Clinging to the floor and bracing her stance, the two bottom tentacles planted their claws on the ground to prevent her from falling over, which proved useful as her hips compressed into being less prominent and her legs strained themselves longer and thicker.

The cybernetics down the length of Octavia’s spine melted into her flesh and bone as she let out a shrill shriek, it binding into her nerves and spilling forth stark colors and hard-edged shading bound within thin, tinted lineart that wound around her silhouette and through her inner details. Unnatural, sickly-green light cloaked her and entirely overtook her flickering form and reached out around in branching, almost root-like sparks. Her head throbbed, her whole body burned as her proportions began to distort with the shortening of her arms and legs and her torso seeming to compress into being shorter and wider, clothes claimed by the physical flatness and matching her changing body size. Through everything, her whole body flashed between green-tinged block coloring and having a light green fill with a visible black skeleton quickly revealed to be claimed by the hand-drawn touch.

“Let… Let…” she heaved, letting in a whistly breath in a vain attempt to collect her thoughts for even a moment.

“LET.”

“ME.”

“OOOOUUUUT!”

Her voice was a scratchy, strained howl. Her prosthetic leg twitched violently and its plastic shell was split open from the formation of cracks. All of her limbs, whether organic or inorganic, thrashed in a nearly-berserk frenzy, though she still wasn’t able to move anywhere due to the harness still being firmly affixed to the stand.

Yellow electricity coursed throughout Oktavia’s body, steeling herself on the table and heaving as her shoulders loudly cracked into greater broadness, singed clothing becoming tight against her thickening torso and waist. Her previously looser-fitting uniform only grew tighter even as her breasts melted away into flatness. Her uniform sleeves rode up on her trembling arms as they thickened and lengthened similarly to her legs, and her veins, pulsing with yellow light, bulged from her intensely-trembling hands as they grew thicker, palms widening and fingers becoming more square in shape, looking and feeling more weathered. Her breathing was ragged, everything burned, attire becoming more ill-fitting as fat squished against it and padded her face with a noticeable double-chin.

Her whole body shook in pain. It almost feels like she had been hit by a bus…

Ohm continued to thrash wildly against the firm attachment of the harness stand. Even with the flattening of her breasts, her torso only widened further and her waist followed suit to fill out the width of the harness, metal searing and melding into her flesh through her clothing before the front of it fused entirely shut. Sparks, emerald radioactive fire, coiled around her form to morph her shape into seemingly whatever suited its whims. Her torso had been pulled out into an exaggerated wideness and roundness that wasn’t tempered by the compressing of her hips, nor by her shoulders being pulled out into greater broadness and reshaped into being more square. The increase in thickness spilled into her flailing arms and their surrounding linework smoothed in order to give them a distinct softness that somehow spared her hands. Her neck dramatically thickened, though it lacked any soft or rounded features.

Her hands, though still being twisted and now exposed from her gloves burning away, remained five-fingered as their digits became more square and her palms widened, overall thickening and her nails becoming the same color as her skin while being distinguished only by lineart. Somehow, feeling managed to come from her missing leg, something that wasn’t a phantom sensation. Genuine. Flesh, bone, and proper structures took the place of her prosthesis’s fractured shell and fried machinery under her pants and boots. She would have normally been ecstatic at the prospect of having her missing leg back…

If it weren’t for the fact that it simply acted as another space for the burning pain to take hold as both of her now-organic legs thickened and softened with sloped lines. Her long boots tightened around her feet while dyeing themselves a dark brown, losing any previously-held details like soles and laces while muted green patches formed on the inner and outer sides of their heels, overall becoming more rounded in shape and making her lower legs look thinner as her pants became much baggier and tucked themselves into her boots.

The mechanical tentacles attached to Oktavia were more than powerful enough to rip the table she was leaning on to splinters as an incredibly distinct nauseating pain shot through her. A horrible pain in her stomach, in her crotch, her physical sex morphing to male and her stomach smoothing over more as the dissolving of her original sexual structures made more room within. She clutched a hand over her mouth in an attempt to restrain from throwing up as her eyes watered. A decidedly-awkward voice crack interrupted her pained whimpers for a few moments as her throat and Adam’s apple thickened, apple bobbing in her throat as the cracking was overpowered by a newly deepened, strained roar that seemed to resonate throughout her head. Her eyes continued to water from the building pressure in her skull before it released with loud cracks and momentarily-slipped joints from the thickening and reshaping of bone, features becoming more angled and her jaw growing noticeably more square even through her pudge.

Noticeable wrinkles, born both from stress and seemingly age, grew around her eyes, mouth, and cracking, reshaping nose, the dyed hair of her bangs falling away to expose more wrinkles across her forehead. Her face was red and beads of sweat were forming from heat which buzzed in her eyebrows and scalp: Her eyebrows grew larger but thinner, and from her burning scalp her hair fell apart and away down her back and in front of her blurred vision, leaving a prominent bald spot in the front and the remainder on the sides and back being left much shorter and the back having a small cowlick. The shade of brown was both lighter and more muted in color, though still dark enough to form a thin patch of darker color under her nose and around her mouth, as if she had a beard but shaved it. She bit her lip and hissed while her hair stood on-end from a new stinging all across her skin as its pink shade was replaced with warmer undertone. The tattoo that the spinal augmentation overlapped dissolved away into nothing.

She threatened to split her lip from how intensely she was biting into it as even it was claimed and pulled into being thinner and less prominent. Attempting to distract herself, she mumbled, though it grew incoherent the more clearly she heard herself. The worn, haggard voice that rumbled in her chest… It most certainly wasn’t her voice. But it was still familiar. A twinge of pain shot through her brain, causing her to yelp and shove her face into her hands. Her mind was clouded with static, her vision blinded with green light. Too familiar.

She knows this voice.

Of all the sense-distorting, reality-bending changes taking hold of Octavia—her true physical three-dimensionality being stripped from her; the stark, clear colors separated from each other and their surroundings by thin, colored lineart; her exaggerated body shape and anatomy—it was the changes within, not visible unless she were to be vivisected, that burned the worst. Even the nausea of her physical sex shifting to male, changing her very stance, was transmuted into a nerve-burning electric pain that overpowered the urge to throw up. No blood spilled from her nose or mouth, yet her thickened throat burned and her yowls were momentarily interrupted by awkward voice cracking, a crooked line forming down the front of her neck to denote a more prominent Adam’s apple and the awkward cracking giving way to a distinctly deeper-if-shrill tone. Her mind was clouded and scrambled, but she knew that she didn’t recognize what was coming out of her mouth. Then again, with her lips losing their previous prominence and color distinction, lower lip gaining a simple line in its front corner going partway down her chin and her upper lip gaining a similar line to her nose, she wouldn’t recognize her own mouth.

Her whole head was resculpted into being much more square and somehow even more angled, cheek and brow ridge prominence flattening and her chin being pulled down into a stark, sharp angle. Unlike the rest of her body—at least not primarily—her head and face weren’t made up mostly of soft, sloped shapes and angles. It felt almost like her pointed nose was being pressed down on as it shortened into a snubbed length and was molded into a much more square, blocky shape while gaining a noticeable downward hook. The shape of her ears became more round and their inside details greatly simplified into a mere two lines to define their ridges. With her shorter nose and squared-out features, her head shape overall was more squat.

Her vision blurred. The blue and brown of her irises were quickly overtaken by a single-tone, detail-lacking dark green that even swallowed up her pupils, and it almost seemed like her eyes were melting as the white sclera of her eyes being drained away into nothingness and left behind only her now-green irises which grew into larger, taller oval shapes and blinked on their own. The flat-colored circles that took the place of her eyes lacked even any eye-shine on top of their missing pupils and sclerae. Even her eyebrows were stolen away, though curved lines formed near the top of her nose bridge to give the appearance of a perpetual scowl. Her orange-tinged, more-saturated skin tone gave way to a desaturated-if-still-pale yellow-tinged ivory. With her gritting her teeth in pain, the simplification of their details were revealed, now lacking visible gums and any distinction between individual teeth for both jaws.

Her yellow-dyed side-braids entirely fell away and any remaining traces of yellow in her hair were replaced by a homogeneous, matte dark brown similar to her original hair color, and any detailing and stray strands were flattened away as her hair dramatically shortened. It almost seemed like, including the growing sideburns that visually sectioned off her ears from the rest of her face and connected to the top with a distinct cut-in shape at the temples, her hair was made of a single piece without visible internal details, though a small projection from the back implied that it was swept back. Her hair band did not stay on regardless as it melted away into nothing. Whatever her head looked like on the outside, it didn’t change the crackling static pain that burned in her brain. Something that crackled in her mind…

His head hurts.

His…?

The whole room shook and rattled. The irradiated sparks cloaking Octavia’s form did not cease and, almost spitefully, swelled to an even greater intensity. Every electronic in the room seemed to be overloaded, the various light fixtures and televisions rapidly flickering and flashing, and Oman shielded her vision with her hand to spare her already-poor vision from any more damage. Giving her vision an annoying yellow haze, yellow electricity nipped at her clothing before diving into it and winding through the material of both her uniform and what she wore under it.

What it had previously singed with its presence it now forced to grow, beyond all laws of matter. Her undergarments under her pants reshaped into a pair of boxers and her now-useless bra dissipated away as the civilian clothing she wore under her uniform refit itself to better fit her new size and body shape. Her pants were spared most of the more ornate changes, which were focused primarily on her civilian shirt, which thickened into a vertical-ribbed cotton material and lengthened in the collar and sleeves while dyeing itself a desaturated mid-tone green. The ends of her sleeves gained distinct cuffs and the lengthened collar both folded itself down and squished into her neck, more clearly being a sweater. The hair band that had fallen away with the shortening of her hair dissolved in a flash of yellow.

The berserk electricity around Ohm’s body almost drowned out all other sensory input. The purely artistic logic that his physical form was now bound tightly to meant that what he was originally wearing under his uniform was unimportant and, by all accounts, may as well not exist. It simply continued to twist his clothing, his already-touched pants becoming an indistinct material and a muted camouflage-olive green in color with a vertical strip of yellow-tinged brown going partway down the front, and horizontal patches of the same color and intersected with a parallel line in their middles forming on the outer side of his legs. The top part of his uniform was swallowed up by the same color and material as his pants while losing the large majority of its previous details and Oscorp branding, collar opening up into a short V-neck which led down the placket that went all the way down to the top of the harness and was now fastened over the right side of his chest with a single brown button at the middle of the neck. Both his clothing and the harness that was fused to him looked flat and the green attire underneath lacked any wrinkles or implied depth, making it look like the clothing had somehow grown under the burning metal.

His snarling and flailing proved to not entirely be useless as he finally managed to pull himself away from the harness’s stand, green sparks arcing in bizarre shapes as he clumsily stumbled in a noticeably dizzy state. The logic-sundering sparks danced across his body and congealed into solid structures over the harness, almost dripping like sludge around his wrists and down to his knees, edges cleaning themselves up and clearly layering as the top layer as the crackling sparks began to fade and it began to swell with new brown shades. Linework snaked across its summoned shape to define wrinkles, overlapping sections, shoulder sleeve seams, and whatever else was needed as its structure became more concrete. The tentacles still clearly fit in the back due to the new article of clothing having structured itself around them.

It was clearly a coat, opened up in the front and lacking lapels, straps, zippers, and buttons, with a large collar that was popped up around the sides and back of his head, and the whole coat was very large, even oversized, the latter of which being especially prevalent with how the baggy sleeves reached his wrists even though they were rolled back. A large patch of dark, muted brown formed partway down his back, bisected with a vertical piece of lineart, and extended all the way down the front in strips that didn’t touch the inside edges, terminating in the back with a square edge above the top set of tentacles. Inside the front strips formed thin rectangles that were darker, more saturated, and red-tinged. The popped collar and rolled sleeves were considerably darker and more saturated, possibly containing a tinge of green, compared to the desaturated, spiced brown that made up most of the coat’s color.

The black material of the aged Oktavia’s harness almost seemed to grow into her uniform as large sections of padded rubber formed across her back and the sides of her torso with holes for the tentacles, along with growing over the tops of her shoulders and partway down her chest, the electricity-retardant material clipping into the fabric and making up the top of her chest area. Black pads of the same material formed on her elbows and layers of a less-rigid version formed all across her lower legs, the top layer made of two pieces held together by clips on the outer and inner sides, boots under the lower layer shortening, thickening, and blackening while gaining mesh details. Her gloves not only grew to better fit her hands, but also blackened and gained a mix of rubber and mesh like her shoes. Thin yellow lines wound around many of the edges of the black rubber padding, winding under the clips the shoulder padding and going around the clips of her legs, sparing the mesh and lower layers.

The remaining fabric of her uniform dyed itself the same green as the sweater underneath, her jacket and pants both blending together into a single piece with clean stitchwork keeping its various sections together like a jumpsuit as its material reknit itself into thick, durable corduroy. A multitude of pockets and pouches were built into it, a mixture of straps and zippers on the outside of her lower thighs and on the upper part of her left shoulder, along with a pair of zippers on the sides of her chest that were angled downward near the middle. The green material wove to firmly attach to the black harness and leg padding as a single piece and the sleeves tucked themselves into her gloves. All down the front of her torso formed a zipper that wasn’t zipped up past the black padding despite being able to, which exposed her turtleneck collar. Any previous Oscorp patches entirely dissolved away.

She grunted and couldn’t help but fiddle with her sweater collar. A pair of high-quality, dark-lensed goggles strapped themselves over her eyes, somehow clearing up her vision while tempering the glare of the unnatural light. Her nerves tingled with residual sparks and a persisting headache. Even with her own pain, she couldn’t help but hurt for his old friend.

He grit his teeth and keeled over, both hands to his head. A surge of electric pain. A cognitive dissonance that melted away almost as quickly as it appeared.

His friend.

He reached his hand out to the eye-searing epicenter, both trying to drown out the light and futilely reach out to his friend. The blooming sparks and Octavia’s howling both reached their breaking point. All four of Oman’s tentacles were bracing him now as the whole building rattled, the flashing televisions shaking and letting out a disjointed cacophony as even their volume settings fluctuated chaotically, every light fixture strobing faster and faster and faster and-

Oman’s head buzzed painfully and he held a hand to his burning chest, his heart almost seeming to slam against his rib cage. A loud clank and slam resounded throughout the building as the darkness and silence was overtaken by the restarting power returning the lights and turning the TVs back on with audio. It was revealed that many of the lights and a few of the TVs were completely blown out. So loud, the still-working televisions all playing discordant audio of a news broadcast, and his nerves weren’t helped by the dull clunk of his friend falling forward, body motionless. His thoughts swam in a mixture of panic and a tightness, a crampedness, a fogginess… The name he remembered being called, Oktavia Oman, tasted strange in his mouth.

No matter. He needs to see if his… two-dimensional friend was still alive.

With shaky breathing, he slowly stepped forward with a new staggering limp before using the four tentacles to help him walk, kneeling and reaching a hand out to his seemingly-unconscious friend. On his inert friend’s head, over his eyes and curving around behind them in a distinct oblong shape, were what appeared to be a pair of dark blue-cyan goggles that somehow remained attached despite not having any straps over his nose or ears, though his brow was noticeably furrowed over them with flesh-tone linework. Their back ends were marked with small white dots of indiscernible purpose, and right over the area of his eyes were thin, round, near-white yellow-green lenses surrounded by green lineart. What a strange shape, Oman thought, were they glued on? Or was it just… cartoon logic?

Oman—just why does that name feel so strange to use now—reached his hand under Ohm’s coat collar to feel for a pulse, the disorienting wrongness making him heave and pull his hand back. He’s going to need to get used to that. He had pulled back by instinct and wasn’t able to catch a pulse from the tiny amount of time he had touched his neck. Maybe it’d be best to look the rest of him over, maybe get more used to looking at Ohm’s reality-breaking form without getting sick.

He hoisted himself up into the air with all four of his tentacles to avoid having to tiptoe around his friend’s splayed limbs as he moved to his side and kneeled again. He slowly extended a gloved hand to touch his coat-wearing friend’s back, watching the formation of brown lines and bumps which denoted squishing and wrinkles around his fingers, as he continued to analyze his friend’s appearance. He didn’t feel revulsion or yank his hand back like he was touching a hot stove. Progress. He stretched his whole arm around Ohm’s torso and easily lifted him up to hold him under his arm, his limbs dangling and the long tentacles dragging against the floor, and an asymmetrical smirk formed on his face as he noticed that one of the tentacles was still holding the EVIL GENIUS cup.

“Mnnnnngghhh…”

Ohm squirmed in his friend’s grasp in a noticeable lower framerate, the thin lenses slowly opening into their proper size and shape to match the opening of his eyes, with flat top edges and rounded undersides that tapered off in the back in a sideways pear-shape that made him look perpetually unamused. The tentacles clinked and squirmed as they wriggled back to life and wiggled as they pulled themselves up, the three not holding the cup almost seeming to look into Oman like they had eyes before two of them snaked downward. Oman turned to face the one that remained and flashed it a small, cheeky smile. At least, until the tentacle’s three claws locked into their sockets with an audible shing and all spun together into a blurred circle that both looked and sounded not unlike helicopter blades, his eyes going wide under his goggles and prompting him to drop Ohm while reeling back.

“Shit, shit, okay-”

Ohm’s tentacles easily wound around to keep him from clumsily falling to the floor like a sack of bricks, reorienting his body upright while he held his hands to his head and groaned. His breathing was shaky and his goggle lenses squished thin with his tightly-shut eyes. The claw which whirred like a buzzsaw ceased and pulled away from Oman. The damn TVs…

“Too… loud…” he wheezed. “...Head… Head is… too…”

Why can’t he align his thoughts? Things were flooding in, mixing together, repelling from each other like oil and water. His name feels so foreign… but just what is his mind looking for to take place of it? His head kept on twitching to the side while letting off green sparks from his neck. The sparks weren’t coming from the chip in his spine, strangely enough. He may be a flat drawing pulled into reality, but he knew that he was at least mostly flesh-and-blood and not some android with faulty mechanisms.

“...Craaaaaamped…”

He slowly let himself down onto his feet, staggering into a tense, arched stance, lenses slowly opening back up.

“Does…” he sighed, trailing off for a few moments before clearing his throat. That doesn’t sound right. He may not have the deepest voice, but he should at least sound more… resolute. He turned to face Oman, who seemed to be staring off into space.

“Does your own name feel strange to you?”

His eye twitched. Oman didn’t respond. Somebody needs to turn those televisions off, or at least mute them. If he wanted to hear praises sung of Norman Osborn, he’d go back to the job…

Wait. Oman wasn’t staring off into space. He was looking at the TVs. And he may not be a walking cartoon, but his brow was clearly furrowed under his goggles, and one of his tentacles was winding up its claws like the head of an angry cobra.

“LYING BASTARD!”

In a blur of yellow and black, Oman ripped one of the television screens apart in a shower of glass and sparks. He seethed with a prominent scowl on his face.

“...Oman?”

He snapped back to reality, looking Ohm in the face.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“...My apologies.”

Outside of the sound of the remaining televisions and humming lights, there was an awkward silence between them.

“Name… Name feeling…” Oman rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the nodule embedded within his spine, “Name feeling… Wrong? Weird?”

Ohm nodded as he moved the mug to hold it in one of his hands and free up that claw, quickly taking a sip… From an empty cup. Right.

“I… need to sit down. My…” he paused, feeling a small smirk try and creep across his face before shaking his head. He can indulge in this new, growing ego later. “...brain feels like a scrambled egg.”

He lifted himself aloft with the stretchy tentacles and scanned the room, seizing a rolling chair with one of the claws in a set of long-lined smear frames and quickly setting himself to sit in it. The chair remained unclaimed by the disorienting force that had infected his form even as he leaned over and used his free hand to adjust the chair’s height, his feet not touching the floor even when he set the chair to its lowest. Oman cracked an amused smirk while Ohm shot him a glare.

"Don't."

Oman couldn’t help but chuckle, leaning his head back as it escalated into full-on laughter.

“Good god, you’re shorter than I used to be!”

Oman didn’t just notice his height, admittedly, but he was mostly focusing on it to draw his mind away from the various… animation inconsistencies. From his perspective, Ohm’s rolled-up sleeves were now relegated to only a stripe at his wrists instead of a prominent fold, and the number of white bands on the tentacles seemed to flicker on each “frame” of their wiggling movement. Not even getting into how washed out his palette was now, even the deep black of his tentacles now simply a dark grey. Animation inconsistencies. In reality. If he were to get hung up on every little bizarre feature of his friend’s existence, he’d probably give himself a brain aneurysm…

Ohm let out a sharp huff as he gestured one of his tentacles towards the chair that Oman was sitting on earlier.

“I know that. Please sit down, you just told me that you need to figure out your name, too.”

Oman rolled his eyes under his goggles and chuckled, planting himself in the chair with enough force to make it roll slightly, shuffling in it as he wound all four of his tentacles to fit behind the chair. He huffed and groaned in discomfort, having accidentally winded himself. He’s not as vivacious or dynamic as he was before.

“Oh, I know who I am-” he snickered, his smile faltering for a moment, gaze lingering on one of his hands, “...supposed to be!”

The smaller of the two spun his chair to face away from Oman, feeling the strange goggles on his face before peeling one of them off to actually look at it himself. How do they remain on without straps?

Oman clumsily leaned over to get a look at the sitting cartoon. From his perspective, the exposed eye was more of a white triangle, furrowed and thin without him seeing any iris, with a thick, angled brown brow above it. Ohm’s face scrunched and he mumbled about needing to get glasses before spinning the chair back around to face him, the uncovered eye reverting to a simple green circle without any sclera and no eyebrow, though it was clear that he was raising one at Oman’s clear, almost exaggerated facial expression of displeasure. His eyes were wide under his dark goggles and his brows furrowed, his mouth pulled into a scowl of complete dumbfoundment fueled by frustration. What in the hell-

“Then what is it, then?”

He jumped as his focus was broken, watching Ohm quickly put the goggle lens back over his eye. Right. Don’t get hung up over it.

“Y’know-” he laughed, holding his arms wide to the side and leaning back, “-the dead guy!”

An awkward silence hung for all too long in the air between them. His strained attempt at a smile quickly faded and he rolled his eyes while letting his arms dangle over the sides of the chair. Did he really already forget? The radiation must have fried his short-term memory, too.

“Otto Octavius!”

More silence.

Ohm pinched the bridge of his nose and his face scrunched up. He rubbed his temples as he let out a sharp sigh.

“You… have got to be…” his hand balled up into a fist tight enough to start shaking, “...KIDDING ME.”

Otto reeled back, watching his friend’s anger kick up blinding green sparks, gears turning in his head. Wearing a lot of green, four mechanical claw-tipped tentacles attached to his back…

“Same name?”

The smaller of the two quickly leapt up, pointing at him while planting one foot on the chair’s headrest, forcing the chair to teeter on the brink of falling backwards. All four of his tentacles wiggled freely.

“YES!”

Otto covered his face with both of his hands as he quickly cracked into cough-laden cackling. It was a bizarre mixture of annoyance drowned out by absurdity-tinged hilarity. On one hand, it’s hilarious. On the other hand, trying to make a distinction between their names is going to be impossible.

“We’re both Otto!”

“Hell yes, we are!”

“This is serious, you old fool!” spat the cartoon. “We need some means of distinguishing between us!”

The luminous claws of Otto’s top two tentacles gently rotated as he raised them up, gesturing them like heads looking the short cartoon over with a deadpan expression.

“...Between our names!”

“What’s your idea, then?” he asked curtly, leaning forward. “If you’re going to be taking charge like this, then you must know first.”

A small, wry smile was apparent on his face. He may be tired, but it doesn’t mean that he can’t be cheeky.

“Right?”

The toon rubbed the back of his sparking neck with a noticeably smug grin on his face.

“Indeed. To distinguish us, I shall be known as the M-”

He froze. His hand shook and twitched, yellow-and-green sparks arcing between his fingers almost like a spider’s web, facial expression going blank and his head twisting sideways into an extremely unnatural angle. Otto held a hand to his chest and steered one of his tentacles close to his friend’s face, slowly poking his cheek and pulling it back when it drew multicolored electric sparks.

“Hellooooooo? Are you still there?”

The toon’s head twitched. It was like the gears of his brain were working desperately to dislodge an unwanted wrench. His hand migrated down, as if by a new instinct, to feel the circle in the middle of his harness. The remaining clutter that hung in the back of his mind melted away with a twinge of dull pain. The yellow-tinged circle… He knew what it was. The battery.

The removable battery.

Something meant to be exchanged for a new one when it runs out.

How is he…

His head slowly rotated back into a proper angle. An enraged, furious scowl quickly grew on his face. He wasn’t a regular human any more, everything is too loud, and he realized now that his form is on a time limit.

“God…”

“Are you-”

He jumped out of his chair and seized one of the televisions with one of his clawed tentacles in a smear of washed-out color and jagged lines, easily smashing it.

“DAMN IT!”

Otto yelped and curled his legs up into his chair, all four tentacles bracing to keep him from toppling over.

“Shit!”

With the cup still in-hand, the toon panted in a slouched pose, free hand clenched into a fist as he pulled the tentacle back and clicked its claws together. His expression relaxed slightly, hand opened up as he held it to his chest and slowly turned to face a wide-eyed Otto.

“...One for one?”

“What the hell was that for?” Otto shouted over the noise of the remaining TVs while gesturing wildly.

“Something that you wouldn’t be able to understand or assist me with.” scoffed the toon.

Otto blew a dismissive raspberry before sighing.

“Yes, I can’t understand if you never tell me!”

“Alright.” The toon huffed, hand migrating back down over the battery, gripping the battery’s edge. “Why tell you when I can just rip the bandaid off and just-”

He wrenched at it, attempting to pull it out.

“-sh-”

It didn’t budge. He stared down at it, thoroughly confused.

“...show…”

Even using both of his hands, even deftly manipulating one of his claws into tighter crannies, he wasn’t able to remove the battery. When he pulled his hands and claws away, they trailed vibrant yellow-and-green electricity that lingered in web-like arcs before fizzling away.

“...you.”

He looked back to Otto, neither of them speaking.

“...Are you going to t-”

“External battery. Runs out and needs to be replaced with a full one. Normally.” he hissed emphatically. “There, that’s what I was bitching about, are you happy?”

Otto snickered and nodded.

“Y’know, hearing your Cartoon Network-looking self swear is too funny. You don’t even look Adult Swim-ey.”

“Hey! You put some respect on Roger Rabbit’s name!” the shorter one seethed, quickly breaking down into laughter while patting the battery. “Tangent, but this thing better have bottomless power!”

Lighthearted laughter filled the room, almost drowning out the remaining televisions even when the toon’s eye and neck twitched from a small twinge of pain. His vision flashed with disjointed images for a few moments and the nodule in his neck flickered with yellow light, though his enhanced mind was quickly able to discern what he was seeing: One of the myriad of halls in the building, specifically where he had first met with Oktavia—er, Otto, though the viewpoint was strange. It was an above view, which didn’t make sense for a human movement range, but did make sense for a camera. He recalled a camera, a camera with yellow lights. Yellow. Why was he able to see through the camera?

“Alright, back on track. What did you want to call yourself, again?”

He paused, wrestling his vision back to reality. A smug smile crept across his face.

“You can call me the Master Planner.”

Otto attempted to keep a deadpan expression, but his straight face didn’t last long before he broke down into wheeze-laden laughter. The self-proclaimed Master Planner couldn’t will himself to actually be angry.

“Do you want to make a distinction between our names or not?”

Otto continued to laugh before reining himself into a state where he could properly speak.

“Y’know what? Everyone else can figure it out. We can distinguish between ourselves just fine.” he snickered. “Why don’t we just call ourselves ‘the O’s’ like old times?”

There was a pause between both of them. Otto’s throat hitched and he held his hand to his head, while his friend tilted his in a mixture of concern and confusion.

“Like ‘old times’?”

Otto held up his pointer finger as he collected his thoughts.

“I… have… his m-memories.” he stammered. “At-at least, a lot of his memories.”

He sighed and cleared his throat.

“So, um, Norman and I-” his anxiety only grew more pronounced, “-I, er—by ‘I’ I mean ‘Otto’, and by ‘Otto’ I mean-”

“Get a hold of yourself.”

Otto didn’t respond, the toon sighing.

“Please. Continue.”

“Back in grad school—I’veneverbeentogradschool—Er, Norman and I used to be partners, buddies. His last name begins with an O, my last name begins with an O, so everyone used to call us ‘the O’s’!”

The toon exchanged his cup with one of his tentacles, allowing him to steeple his hands with his fingertips together.

“Might as well call us ‘O’s-Corp.’ ” he chuckled.

“That’s-that’s the thing!” stuttered Otto. “I’m half the reason it’s called ‘Oscorp’!”

“And now… Well…” the toon’s voice tapered off for a few moments as he shrugged. “So how’d he fuck you over? In my head, the memories of… hmmh, ‘me,’ I remember him quite literally trying to kill me outright.”

“...You curse a lot.”

“Real life doesn’t have a swear filter.” the small toon smirked and snickered. “Now answer my question.”

“I wanted to do robotics, prosthesis… He didn’t want to do that. I left because of the radiation eating away at me, something I got from working with him for so long. He gave me grant money when I left, but then he stopped. He was the famous one, and I was…” Otto sighed, his voice rough and his hand clenching into a fist. “...I was left behind.”

“Then came the rampage?”

“After much plotting, yes.” Otto confirmed as he nodded.

The Master Planner easily lifted himself into the air with his three non-occupied tentacles, chuckling as he looked down at Otto.

“Looks like we share more in common than just our extra appendages, now.”

Otto raised an eyebrow.

“A-”

“A keen intelligence.” the toon interrupted as he turned his head in an attempt to relieve a crick from his neck, video feed from various cameras throughout the building flashing across his vision. “A foresight.”

Otto smiled and nodded, leaning back and maneuvering his various tentacles to pick up his somehow-still-intact mug and refill it with alcohol without having to use his hands.

“Do you want to stay here? What if Osborn sends goons after us? I still feel like I’ve been hit with a bus.” he snickered in between sips.

“Do you?” the toon quickly replied. “Nobody is coming for us, I can assure you that. The only people awake are incompetent criminals and people who are forced to work for incompetent criminals.”

Otto wheezed a laugh.

“You’d think that the lightshow we made would have gotten us a lot of attention!”

“Indeed. I find that my brain appears to be connected to this building’s security feed, however. If somebody was here, I would-”

Something buzzed, blaring music in their ears. Video game music. Only one of them had video game music as their ringtone…

Otto’s phone was still intact?

Otto cursed, patting himself down and fiddling in his jumpsuit’s various pockets, feeling the buzzing in his breast pocket and quickly scrambling to unzip it and retrieve the phone. Somebody’s calling him.

Norman’s calling him.

“Why the hell is Norman calling me?”

“Oh, he most certainly doesn’t know.” snickered the cartoon. “Just wait it out. Hanging up would look very suspicious.”

Otto sighed, letting the song stop and seeing the “missed call” notification pop up on the screen. That didn’t stop an ear-splitting beeping from emerging from the toon, breaking his composure for a few moments before he quickly rummaged through the inside of his coat and pulled out his own blocky, two-dimensional phone, furrowing his brow at the screen.

“Oh, goddammit-” he grumbled, though his phone quickly silenced as Norman’s attempted call hung itself up, leaving only Otto’s cheeky laughter.

“Damn, he tried both of us.”

“And he failed.”

Otto slowly pulled himself out of his chair, stumbling for a few moments before untangling his tentacles from the chair and stabilizing with them.

“I think that means he’s coming for us.”

The Master Planner smirked.

“Most likely. Why don’t we play a game on our way out?”

Otto paused, tilting his head in confusion.

“What?”

Grunting and kicking up his coat to flap from forcefulness, the toon lashed out a clawed tentacle at one of the still-intact televisions broadcasting about Norman and ripped it apart with ease.

“Whoever destroys more of these blasted broadcasts by the time we get out wins.”

Otto turned towards the screens, winding up one of his tentacles before slamming it through one of the monitors in a rain of ruined machinery and glass.

“What happens if I lose?”

The toon’s poise completely fell away as he cackled with a delighted, toothy grin on his face, revving up one of his claws into a circular blur of a buzzsaw blade.

“You just lose.”

Slowly lifting himself into the air, Otto nodded with a large grin.

“Deal.”

VENGEANCE [Remake] {Double Doc Ock FtM TFTG PMCTN}

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Oktavia Oman

Oktavia Oman

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