A chat with an Octopus

The shuttle arrived on the flight deck of the Helicarrier, landing heavily where after a few seconds of killing the power, its front hatch opening where several squads of SHIELD troopers flooded out the entrance and surrounded their prisoner as she was carted out of the shuttle in a gurney. Her arms and legs strapped in, and an inhibiter collar placed around her neck, preventing any motor functions, not even to her mechanical limbs which were folded over her body. Wheeled towards an elevator platform, she and her guards were lowered into the bowers of the ship where Nick Fury waited for them at the lip of the elevator. His hands behind his back and Maria Hill standing behind him.

“Welcome back men, did she give you any trouble?”

“No sir.” Explained one of the agents carting onward down the hall. “She surrendered almost immediately when we arrived.”

“We caught her just as she finished building THAT too.” Answered another, nodding towards an arch they brought with them. The device looked just like the portal device Fury reclaimed from the Fantastic Four if not a bit crudely put together with what Dr. Octopus had to work with.

“Hmm, Five out of Six under our thumb. Not including the ladies we have an eye on at 4 Yancy street.” Following the guards as they moved Doctor Octopus to her new holding cell, Fury gave agent Hill a look with his good eye, nodding to her. “Hill, keep me updated on the three that are there, let me know when they are relocated here so we can get rid of them all on mass.”

“Yes sir.” Changing direction so she could head to the control deck, Fury continued on with the guards hauling the tentacled villainess to the rest of the Sinister Susans.

***

Seeing the heavy, mechanical door open at the entrance of the brig, the Fantastic Four moved aside and watched as Doctor Octopus was wheeled in over a gurney into the in the middle of the room and repositioned so she would be strapped in a standing position. Nick Fury was the last to enter as he approached the bound woman and kept up a stern face to the smirking villainess who took a quick look around the room she was in. Looking over to the Fantastic Four, Nick Fury gestured to his guards with a simple nod.

“Mr and Mrs. Richards, you can wait in the mess hall, I’ll meet you there. I have some words to share with your visitor.”

“Please come with us.” Offered one of the guards, his hand out, pointing towards the exit.

“What are you going to do with her?” Asked Reed, not liking where this was going.

“Only what I need to find the last of them and get this whole matter resolved. Now please follow your escort to the mess.”

Trading looks of worry, the Fantastic Four looked to the guards in the room and eventually made to leave, escorted out of the brig by two guards who led them out onto the halls of the ship. The moment the brig’s door sealed shut, Fury turned his cyclopean gaze back to Doctor Octopus who retained her smirk the entire time.

“Don’t want them to see how you ask ladies about their personal lives Fury?” The variant of Susan asked, almost innocently.

“You are going to tell me how you made that dimensional portal my men now have stored in our Helicarrier’s holding bay, then you are going to tell me how you’ve been gallivanting across the multi-verse.”

“Jealous?” The woman asked with a raised eyebrow, her attention back at the brig’s entrance as more guards had arrived, but these were carrying heavy equipment with them. “I’ve met and killed a LOT of Nick Furies in my ‘gallivanting’ as you put it. I’d like to say you are all the same, but…”

“I want my answers, and you are going to provide them, you and your friends over there.” Pointing back at the cell they were contained in. “If you don’t give me the answers I’m looking for, I’m going to start asking them, and I won’t be polite about it.”

“Cute. The dolt wants to prove he’s in control of the situation.” Frowning and squaring her jaw, Doctor Octopus mockingly pretended to answer in Fury’s demeanor. “I take it you’ve got methods to make me talk.”

Not liking the woman’s response, Fury snapped his fingers where the three guards who entered the cell pulled free equipment they had brought with them earlier. Revving them up, the woman quickly realised they had prepared for her arrival… With circular saws. Unable to move, Doctor Octopus remained still due to her inhibiter collar as the SHIELD crew hacked off her mechanical arms one at a time, letting the metal appendages fall to the ground in a metallic heap at the foot of the gurney. When they were done, the crew stepped away from the gurney, leaving the woman still standing up, strapped to her harness with her severed mechanical arms on the floor. Her expression unchanged.

“I’m not playing games here. You are going to give me the information I require, and you are going to do it now.”

Rolling her eyes over to the rest of her team sealed behind a glass wall with inhibiter collars on their necks just like her, the woman was not phased in the slightest. “Honestly little man, if you wanted to know how the portal worked, you’d need to hire a few dozen men and women with more PhD’s under their belt then most people have house keys, and after a few years of going over the basics THEN I might be able to tell them how things work.”

Seeing Fury scowl at her remark, the Susan variant continued.

“Let’s REALLY talk about why we’re here. You’re not interested in how my toys work. Only in how to USE them! So lets go over that. I’ve made a very lucrative venture at going from one reality to the next, stealing technologies and equipment that can benefit me. Particularly ones that don’t exist in my own reality, so I can then sell them off as if they were. It’s rather ingenious really, who’d question how I made them if they never existed to begin with?”

“And them?” Fury nodded back to the rest of the Sinister Susans.

“Interns…” Doctor Octopus smarmed. “Versions of me I’ve come across on my little ‘shopping’ ventures and invited to come with me. I’ve tweaked and upgraded their natural abilities over their long-standing employment with me. And wouldn’t you know it? They all have one thing in common too!”

“Reed Richards?”

The woman snorted and rolled her eyes again, nearly breaking into laughter. “Pff… What?! The human rubber band with autism? No, no, no. The person I’m talking about is YOU!”

Taken back, slightly. Nick Fury retained his resolve to that.

“Don’t believe me? Fine. Let’s go down the long list of sins your other versions have committed in making us the prime examples of what happens when an obsessive-compulsive control freak with government backing meets a freak accident in heels.”

Nodding towards her compatriots to her right, the woman went over each one at a time.

“The Condor? She was serving 50 to life in prison after killing her parents for their trust fund. SABER as they were called in her reality had a happy little honor roll system where inmates could be augmented into weapons and used by the government in exchange for their time served. I think we both know you’re not the type to respect the deals you’ve made; she killed a LOT more people under your command then when she was greedy.”

Nodding over to Electro, she continued. “When Suzie over there had her freak accident with a power cable and lightning bolt in a swimming pool, instead of giving her help, you kept her like a glow bug in a jar for 5 years, poking and rattling her to see how she ticked. You ACTUALLY had her powering a version of this flying tug boat that whole time before I found her. By then the damage was done, you turned her into an emotional firebrand. At least with ME I can point her in the right direction.”

“Fuck you!” Barked Electro, flipping off her leader bound at the center of the brig.

“Mysterio, was burned in an explosion CUTLASS caused when her version of Fury decided blowing up a film studio was a small price to pay to deal with the Chameleon. She’d been a dramatic thorn in General Fury’s side for years before I helped her get the **** she oh so wanted.”

“Giving your nemesis a napalm colonoscopy does wonders in therapy.” Mysterio smirked, getting laughs from the rest of her team mates.

“Oh! And Kraven here was serving her parents crimes in a Russian gulag when you, and by you I mean Nikolai Furi decided to sell off his inmates for experimental weapons testing at 50,000 rupees a head. Imagine his surprise when she came back like a pissed off mountain loin… with the strength and savagery of a pride of lions and killed all his guards bit out his jugular.”

Leaning her head back, Doctor Octopus smirked back at the SHIELD director. “You can change the recipe in each reality, but each Fury I’ve known was made with the same ingredients. An insecure jackass who means well but has a wee penchant for trying to bottle up and contain things he can’t control.”

Breathing in sharply, Fury turned to one of the guards in the room and nodded over to him, then swiftly turned heel and left the brig. led to a second holding cell and taken off the gurney to be sat over the seating at the back of her own cell. Once she was seated and the equipment that brought her there had been removed, the SHIELD crew looked back to the mechanical limbs on the floor and back to her.

“Think we still need that on her?” Wondered one of the guards, hinting towards her inhibiter collar.

“Probably not.”

Removing her inhibiter collar, the guards left the cell so the door could be shut with a hiss of hydraulic pressure. Getting up to her feet and rubbing the discomfort around her neck where the collar was around, Doctor Octopus never lost her smug grin.

“Everything’s going according to plan.”