Nature and Science

As Elle plodded along, silently carrying the both of them through the forest, Otto found himself impressed by how easily she navigated the unmarked deer trails. A mere day of trotting at Elle’s pace would have been several more for anyone else. With the dead weight of his metal arms, even if he had been awake and known which way to go, he doubted it would have been possible to make it to her hunt camp in time to save himself from the wretched chill the river had worked into his bones.

I would have found a way, he told himself, though nagging doubt tickled his ego.

The forest was huge, with no sign of other humans, and it’s size reflected its vast quiet. They stopped briefly at a stream so that they could fill their bellies with water and Otto had asked her if she considered it all her ‘territory’. A sharp roll of her eyes and a quick nod lent Otto details towards a new theory that he was eager to pursue.

As they carried on, Otto once again sinking into the all-too-thick pelt of the beast, he grew bored of the silence.

“So, are you… a werewolf, or…something more magical?”

“What does it matter?” Elle answered.

“I’m curious,” Otto replied. “I’ve met lizard men who were once human. A man who was turned into pure electric energy. Another, he was turned into sand.”

“You’re full of shit,” Elle chuckled and, despite himself, Otto smiled with their shared sense of ridiculousness.

“Not at all! I’ve met a wizard before, a real one. Asshole, mind you, not worth mentioning. I know a boy, a man, that is, who could make spider silk and swing about the skyscrapers of New York City,” Otto quietly added. “He could crawl up those very skyscrapers, too, like the arachnids he borrowed abilities from. Threw a hefty punch.”

“What, with his eight legs? Doubt!” Elle jeered.

“You have a man with four metal limbs, right here on your back,” Otto pressed. “Does that not lend me at least the slightest amount of credibility?”

“Questions, questions. Always talking, you are,” she growled.

Otto felt her begin to pick up her pace.

“I’m a scientist,” Otto replied, smirking despite himself. “I can’t help myself.”

“Yeah, can’t help yourself, I believe that part,” she shot back, and Otto’s face fell into a disappointed scowl.

The cold of evening began to bite again, sharper than the werewolf's tongue. As Elle came to the crest of an easy sloping ridge, Otto was relieved to see a small structure within a clearing. A tiny speck amongst the trees, noticeable only because of it's unnatural rectangular shape, it couldn't have been more than two miles away.

“There,” Elle said, gesturing with her massive head. “Home sweet home.”

She drew an immense breath through her nose, stiffening as she listened to the forest around her. Then, satisfied with whatever she was trying to find, she carefully began to side-step her way down the hill, something Otto found rather considerate as he imagined it wasn’t easy to balance with him, quite literally, on her back. He wanted to offer to walk but, if he fell, it was a long tumble down, and Otto had no interest in the bumps and bruises such folly would promise.

Her cabin sat, dark and lonely among several trees. It was small and one story, with a stone chimney that peaked out of the worn cedar shingles from the rear of the snow-dusted roof. Two windows dotted the front on either side of the door, giving it some symmetry, and there was a front porch that made the entire thing seem bigger. To one side of the barren yard sat a firepit stacked with stones and two Adirondack chairs which, upon drawing closer, Otto noted looked splintery and decidedly unfriendly. The lonely property looked picturesque, save for the truck parked in the bushes to the side of the cabin, rusty and covered with a ragged and worn blue tarp. Another car sat beside it sporting a cracked windshield and destroyed front bumper; the hood was bent inward, and Otto wondered if Elle had perhaps hit something with it. Wood piles were scattered everywhere, and Otto could hear the gentle trickle of a stream over the wind.

Elle lowered herself to the ground and Otto barely had time to slide off before she had begun to shrink into her skin, fur shedding and limbs cracking as they reformed themselves. She shook herself, lifting each foot off the ground and swinging her legs to ensure everything worked as it should. Then, she unceremoniously grabbed her jacket from Otto’s clutching hands and began fishing about in her pockets.

“They don’t suit you,” she said, eyeing her sunglasses on his face.

Finding what she was looking for, a small brass key like any other, she slid her jacket back on.

He watched her step up to the front door and unlock it, marveling at how healed her skin looked. She bore fresh, vicious scars that raced down her arms like lightening.

Of course, he thought. If she didn't have some sort of healing factor, like Peter, her bones couldn't reshape and she'd be crippled by her... shifting.

She pushed through the door and waved him into the darkness beyond the threshold. Otto hesitated momentarily, looking from Elle to the gun still clutched in his hand.

“Should I leave this outside?”

“Oh, fuck no,” Elle answered quickly. With her hat, she gestured to somewhere on the other side of the door before she disappeared into the black.

Otto stood, cautiously waiting in the doorway. He heard the distinct scratch of a match and saw a small ember begin to glow. There was a flash and Elle placed a clear glass globe overtop of an ignited oil lamp. She raised the wick up just a bit before giving it a satisfied nod.

“Here,” she said, trading him the lamp for the gun, which she simply leaned up against the wall before the doorframe. “You need this more than I do.”

He took her sunglasses off and placed them on a countertop he was able to see. With light at last, one that was low enough not to strain his eyes, he took stock of his new surroundings.

The walls were wooden, of course, the entire structure was a log cabin after all. Pelts and several paintings lined the walls alongside a smoke-stained tapestry depicting several deer in a field tacked above the mantle. Snowshoes and crossed skis decorated more of the place, and Otto was surprised to see several framed mineral and feather collections neatly labelled and proudly displayed. There were no photographs to be seen in the main room but it still felt homey. Off to one side was a kitchen with a clay brick tiled floor and wooden cabinets painted all sorts of peeling colours. Copper pots and pans were hung on the walls with nails. Sitting on raised bricks that made up the hearth was a small, freestanding cast iron stovetop. Its dark stack was shaped to follow up through a hole in a log near the rafters. A fridge, yellowed and rumbling with an aged motor, was shoved under a butcherblock countertop and covered with crude and crinkled drawings.

“You have power?” Otto asked, wondering why she handed him a lamp if she had electricity.

“Propane,” Elle answered, already setting to light the neatly assembled wood in the stone fireplace. “Tank and generator’s out back. Small one, mind you. Don’t spend a lot of time indoors these days.” Her eyes flickered to the oil lamp in Otto’s hand. “And I don’t need light to see in the dark.”

Part of the main room was cluttered with two couches, one by the fire and one beneath a large window. Knitted and crocheted blankets sat in a pile beside several thread-bare throw pillows.

The fire lit, Elle went into the kitchen and pulled back a beaded curtain to point at a door halfway down a short corridor.

“Bathroom’s in there. Don’t throw anything down the toilet, I’m on septic.”

Beyond where she stood, the hallway petered off to another door where Otto politely kept his curiosity from asking about.

“This one pulls out,” Elle said, passing by him as she approached one of the couches. She errantly tossed the cushions to the side and pulled the entire thing away from the wall before tilting it back. The backrest flopped down despite its protesting gears. She replaced the pillows, stacked up a few of the throw pillows, and gestured to the blankets on the other couch.

“You can sleep here. Don’t lean too far to one side or it’ll flip on you. I’m going to make something to eat…”

Otto thanked her with a nod and picked his feet out of his boots, dreading how cold the floors would be. He was relieved to find the shaggy brown carpet in the living room area wasn’t too bad. He worked his way around the ramshackle coffee table covered in tall stacks of old outdoor magazines and sat down on the couch. Gingerly placing the oil lamp down upon the table, he halfheartedly wondered if he should extinguish it. Before he could decide, he slid easily onto his side with a heavy, relieved sigh. From the kitchen, he heard Elle chuckle at him but ignored her and the sounds of pots being rummaged through.

For the first time in days, he felt comfortable.

“How you going to fix those tentacles?”

“Ah, so you do have a sense of curiosity,” Otto hummed. He debated not sitting up to talk, but decided he wanted to take his jacket and damp socks off. He hauled himself upright with a strained groan.

“Like…need a boost or something?” Elle turned to him, a measuring cup of water and packaged soup clenched between her fingers, and mimed clipping jumper cabers into a car battery.

Otto rubbed at the back of his neck, fingertips lightly tracing over the inelegant inhibitor chip the young Parker had made.

“I don’t think something so crude, but…essentially. I need access to a computer. A powerful one. Preferably in a lab built by a very savvy engineer.”

“Sounds awfully specific,” Elle muttered. Otto smiled knowingly at her, nodding. She considered him for a moment before shrugging. “Just try a boost.”

“No, no electric shocks,” he firmly stated. “Not after the last several.”

Elle mimed again, pretending to be electrocuted, and let her tongue flop out of her mouth in a mimicry of death.

Otto snorted and gathered up several of the blankets before draping them all around himself until he was nested comfortably. His eyes lazily drifted about the cabin, soaking in every detail. He found it odd there were no pictures of people, wondering if perhaps her rustic lifestyle outweighed the desire to recall special memories. Clearly, family did not suite her hermit leanings. Still, the drawing on her fridge were clearly done by children; perhaps she had nieces, nephews, or cousins she kept at a distance.

“Do you just leave you gun lying by the door like that all the time?” Otto asked her, more curious than affronted by her unsafe habit.

“No,” she said, and gestured vaguely to a wrack above the door. Looking down into the pot on top of the stovepipe, Elle began to chew her bottom lip. She stared for a good minute before she looked back up at him. “But…that wasn’t the first wolf to trespass on my territory this year.”

Otto looked up from stripping his socks off. “There’s been more? How many”

She held up a single digit.

“Another fella, scragglier and skinnier, sickly thing. He came sniffing around here a couple months ago. I initially figured it was on account of my cycle but…he wasn’t looking for a mate. He was looking for a fight, and his brain was boiled enough to make him think he could take me on.”

“Sorry, your cycle? Like…like heat cycle?”

“Mhm, yeah, too much information.” Elle lips pulled back to show her teeth. “Typical man, can’t focus on the real topic.”

“Sorry.” Otto raised his hands defensively, waving them to dismiss the topic. “Again, I’m a scientist. Yours is a kind I’ve not seen before. I’m merely curious, not trying to harass you or make you otherwise uncomfortable.”

He spotted her mouth curl into a smirk before she began to make her way over with the soup. She offered him a bowl and a spoon as she sat down on the adjacent couch.

“Tell me about your arms, then. The slithery looking metal ones.” She swallowed a mouthful of broth, watching him expectantly.

“They…” He paused, unsure of what to say. He had given her his name and she hadn’t seemed to recognize it. She had figured out he was from New York City, based on nothing more than his scant suburban accent, and still she hadn’t indicated she knew he was the infamous Doctor Octopus. Perhaps she really didn’t know…

“They were meant to help with a fusion experiment. I'm a nuclear physicist, you see, and I created a very…very small star. It was meant to enable the entire world, to provide free power for everyone.”

“Free power? Electricity, you mean? Never heard of anyone who wouldn’t want to profit off of that.” The metal spoon clicked against her teeth as she continued eating.

“Nobody should have to pay for power, especially when they need it to live in a modern world. To charge someone for a necessity, when what they pay for is destroying the earth, the environment…mm, I thought I could solve that. Cities cleaned, landscapes restored, countries could be risen from poverty! I thought I could…fix the world, if you would.”

Elle stared at him, her brows knitting together in a deep frown.

“Thought?” she asked.

“My experiment failed,” Otto said bluntly. “And these…things,” he gestured to his tentacles, “…were fused to my back. I can control them, with my mind; they’re connected through my nervous system, my brain, spine, all of it, but…they’re completely dead now. Even the computer has gone cold.” He tapped at the metal harness before looking away. “Until I can restore power to them, they’re just…”

After a minute of mournful silence, Elle drank up the rest of her soup.

“Dead weight,” she finished his sentence for him and stood up. He nodded sadly.

“Shit happens,” Elle said. She made her way over to the kitchen, dropping her bowl and cutlery into the deep farmhouse sink. From across the room, she turned back to face him and said very quietly, “Life isn’t fair, after all, and death isn’t either.”

Elle began to peel her jacket off. She slung it over a birch-stick coat rack by the fireplace and made for the corridor, undoing what few buttons she had left on her ragged shirt. Pausing briefly, she gave Otto a sidelong look.

“Figure it out in the morning. For now, the water from the sink is clean to drink. Throw some wood on the fire if you don’t have enough blankets. Don’t worry about letting it go out, otherwise.”

She disappeared down the hallway and Otto heard a door creak open, then close.

He stared at nothing in the room. A million thoughts ran through his head, all of them regarding how to reanimate his actuators, all of them less plausible than the next. Elle clearly had no computer, no means of connecting him to a lab with enough of the right equipment to help him; he continued to be helpless.

At the mercy of his own folly, Otto finished his soup in silence before discarding the bowl and spoon on the coffee table, too tired to walk over to the sink. With much grunting and fighting, he finagled himself out of his river-scented shirt and dropped it and his jacket in an unceremonious pile by the couch.

Something clunked against the floor as his jacket landed. Otto tilted his head curiously, hand hovering over the bulge. Curiosity drove him to turn his coat inside out.

It produced no heat, nor cold, but the arc reactor had some heft to it. Otto stared at it in his hand, turning it over as if in disbelief. Had he brought it with him, from the other New York City, where the Statue of Liberty held a garish shield and the young Spider-Man had fought alongside his ‘brothers’ to stay the hands of monstrous men?

Of course, he reprimanded himself, his brow furrowing deep lines across his face. It’s been in my pocket this whole time…and I’ve been too tired to even notice…damn you, Otto, you fool.

A moment of optimism seized him only for reality to weigh him back down. No matter that he held the power of the sun; he had no lab, no equipment. It was useless to him, and without power to his actuators, he had no way to so much as scan the damn thing.

Tomorrow. Or the next day. Eventually, I’ll… I’ll find a way, Otto thought determinedly. He swallowed back defeat and hid the arc reactor back in his coat pocket. Somehow…

Yet nothing came to him. He had no resources, no contacts; he knew no one.

He took the globe off the oil lamp, lowered the wick until it was no longer visible, and blew out the flame.

Once again, Otto found himself in darkness, kept from the pitch black only by a fire lit by someone else.