Double Octopus
We dropped down into a bush, Venomette sinking back into me. I walked out of the bushes, following the path with broken lights towards what looked like a physics lab. The door was open, one weak beam of light offering evidence someone was inside.
I walked up to the door, my shoes glowing ominously. Just before I could step inside, a tentacle snapped around my leg and dragged us inside. ET apologized immediately, cushioning the scraping across the floor.
“What are you doing here?” Otto sounded remarkably calm, hidden so only the white light from each actuator head blinked back at me. I sat up, trying to see him past the dome of light. He certainly had a threatening silhouette.
“I was looking for you,” I offered, shielding my eyes. “For some reason I feel like I know you.”
“Well, I’m not from this universe,” He said bitterly. “Nothing I know that’s important is true here.”
“My mom used to go here,” I tried to start, my voice breaking a second, so I coughed. “She claims to have met my father here, but he died before I was born. I go to school on the other side of the city, studying sound waves.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Otto asked hesitantly, creaking as he sat down on a stool, turning the light away from my face. He looked different, the tentacles still moving but they seemed less predatory. His face looked less angry, those dark glasses still keeping his eyes hidden.
“What is this place in your world?” I asked and he flinched, rubbing his head.
“It’s the college I met my wife at,” He sounded hoarse. “I studied physics and she loved poetry, literature, anything to do with art. She died the same day I gained my metal limbs.”
“What was her name?” I sat hesitantly on a stool within arms length of him.
He looked at me over the glasses, a frown touching him. He lingered on my eyes for a bit, before he looked away. His hands were clasped in his lap, clenching them hard enough I heard his tendons creak. I saw a sigh run through him, and he looked at me again with a smirk.
“Rosie,” He sounded breathless, his eyes riveted to the corner desk. “My Rosie.”
“Short for Rosaline,” I choked out, covering my face with my hands. I heard a tentacle rattle, the stool straining as he fully shifted his body to me. I couldn’t convince myself to look at him again.
It would be my shit luck that this supervillain from another world knew my mom there. Of course, Otto was actually the least concerning of the five. Besides how he carried himself.
“Is that your mom’s name,” Otto managed to sound uncertain. “Rosaline Reed?” I just sank further into my legs, ET was purring furiously, I think trying to calm me down. I knew my heart was racing, sweat pouring off of me. I felt the hood fall over me, wrapping my head in warmth.
“Was her name,” I managed, I think. Those tentacles moved in my periphery as the older man stood again. I dared looking at him, but he was turned away, the four white dots all still trained on me. I thought I saw his whole body shaking as he was holding something in.
“Of course, I finally end up in another world where she could have lived, and I’ve already missed her,” Otto sounded strangled, his voice wrung out. “And, she had a child, meaning I was the problem.”
“I mean, I don’t know who my father was,” I offered and he wheeled on me so fast I threw myself into the table, expecting trouble. But he was staring me down, his gaze pining me in place. I felt like the wrong move and those tentacles would rip me in half. ET thrummed against me, slowly pulling down over me.
“What do you mean you don’t know? He abandoned you both?” Otto sounded rageful.
“He died,” I said very quietly. Otto’s eyebrows made that sharp plunge between his eyes.
“What?” He deflated a bit, his right hand quivering.
“Mom never talked about him much,” I could hardly hear myself. “He was a math guy I guess, and mom was an artist, grandma hated him.”
“Her mom did hate me,” He sounded rough, ET was everywhere but my face.
“Are you, uh, okay,” I was still trembling under the intensity of his frame looming over me.
“Do you think in this universe,” He swallowed audibly.
“That you’re my dad?” I blurted out and he made the most disgruntled face I’d seen since I last looked in a mirror. We must have looked like clones for that second. ET was buffering, while the two humans looked at each other as if one second from withering and dying.
A tentacle reached towards me, haltingly stopping near by my face. I had a hand up, inches from it. But ET understood my thoughts faster than me. I surged forward and wrapped my arms around him.
The metal band around him was warm which was unexpected, and he felt solid. He went rigid, but I felt his arm land on my shoulders, and the other by my waist as he bent around me. The tentacles were wrapped towards me too. I didn’t want to leave this moment.
My tears embarrassingly ran down his turtleneck. But I guess his rolling down my scalp hit a similar level. He had his cheek on my head, his arms tight around me. I think I was making it hard for him to breathe with how tight I was crushing him to me. That metal harness was uncomfortable in my ribs. I couldn’t imagine how bad it was for him permanently having it.
“There is trouble,” ET hissed, startling both of us out of the hug. I furiously wiped my eyes with my sleeve. He didn’t seem to care though, a smile breaking his face.
“What’s up ET,” I looked at Otto only a second more before focusing on my friend.
“They’re at the Statue of Liberty,” ET hummed, just as Otto looked intently at a tentacle. He nodded at me, and it apparently caught up to him. There was a black goo inside me.
“What are they?” He asked, a hand on my shoulder, already starting to pull me closer.
“ET is an alien, a symbiotic one, we share my body,” I offered, tapping my thumb on my clavicle.
“I guess we have heard weirder,” He smiled again, and it hurt in my soul. It sank into me that he would be gone if Dr. Strange sent them all back. We folded against him, a tentacle bumping into us.
I pressed into him, this man who was without question in my heart, who was my dad, but from a tragic place where mom died instead of him. So we never had a complete family it seemed. I had no idea what he was thinking but we hadn’t moved.
Keeping contact with him seemed paramount. Made it more real.
My head fell against as high on his chest as I could manage, listening to his heart.
Otto chuckled, his hand patting my shoulder. He shifted my head a bit as he rotated. A tentacle opened and closed its petal at Otto, the light briefly flickering red. ET was grumbling inside me, trying to get me to pay attention to them. I was struggling though.
“While I also don’t want to let go,” I felt his laugh in his chest. “There are more pressing matters. We have a responsibility to Parker, or atleast I do.”
“We want to help him too,” I said, hand where ET was rattling. I felt them back us away, slotting over my face and enlarging. Otto watched raptly, until we were the same height.
“It is a neat trick,” ET said, I think directly to Otto. “Having extra limbs, we may borrow this.” Before I could ponder it we took off out the door and towards the bay. We heard the metal cacophony soon after, as we all headed towards a fight.