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saragargan · 2 years

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Eight Arms to Hold You - 13

Pairing: Doc Ock/Original Female Character, Scorpion/Original Female Character, unrequited Parksborn Rating: Explicit, NO minors!! Summary: A rescue operation has Piper, Otto and Mac facing off against Rhino, Mysterio and Vulture at the top of a skyscraper. Warning! This is the second to last chapter for this fic! Start from the beginning to avoid major spoilers!

Prev. chapter Start from the beginning AO3 link

When they arrive, the place seems deserted. The top of the building is half built, with the scaffolding still up in some places. Construction equipment and supplies lay abandoned all over the area. At the same time her spidersense goes off, Scorpion tenses up.

“Something ain’t right.”

He’d no sooner finished the statement than the wall next to them exploded. The three of them scatter as Rhino emerges from the dust and rubble.

“Well, well. It is the little pauk and the two traitors. Come to have your skulls crushed?”

Scorpion squares up with Rhino, and Piper covers his left side, while Otto takes a place on the right.

“Where’s Sara?” Mac demands. Rhino merely laughs.

“Oh, durak, you have fallen right into trap.”

Piper’s spidersense goes berserk at the same time she’s swept off her feet from behind and rocketed into the air. The Vulture’s claws dig into her shoulders, and she can feel blood soaking her suit. She managed to shoot a web out to some scaffolding, anchoring her for a moment, but she knew Vulture would eventually pull her free. Using the distraction as Vulture begins to curse her out, Piper kicks up. Out of instinct, Vulture grabs her foot, releasing her shoulders. Exactly as planned. She uses her new position to grab a handful of important-looking hoses on his suit and pull them loose.

Vulture starts squawking as his suit malfunctions, and Piper freefalls back towards the rooftop. When she lands, she’s just in time to watch Rhino backhand Scorpion into a concrete wall, where he slumps to the ground. Electro is nowhere to be seen. Otto on the other hand is facing off against Mysterio, who was no real threat, only a mere annoyance and distraction. Piper can hear him shouting quips and dramatic lines (“Your time has come to an end Doctor Octopus! Quiver now in fear as you meet your demise!”) She decides to not worry about him, Otto can handle a dorky theater nerd. Instead she focuses her attention on Rhino, who was standing menacingly over Scorpion’s motionless form.

“Yo! Systevich!” Rhino turns just in time to eat a faceful of cinder block. Momentarily stunned, she takes the opportunity to close in and kick him in the face. Then she takes off running in the other direction, with the intention of drawing his attention away from Scorpion.

“Come and get me you big dumb animal!” She taunts.

“RAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!” Is the response she gets. Yep, definitely managed to get his attention. Rhino begins to charge, so Piper picks up speed. Thinking fast, she wonders if she can get his momentum going enough that he would run right over the edge of the building. Her spidersense goes off, and she dodges a chunk of concrete wall that Rhino has thrown at her. No, making him run off the building would be a bad idea. He would survive, unharmed, but on the street below? It would be like a small meteor hit. People would get hurt, and it would only piss him off. She needed an alternative. Out of the corner of her eye she spots a coil of chain hooked up to a crane. Thick, heavy duty chain you would attach to say, a wrecking ball. Piper veers off her course, bolting to the chain. It’s like picking up an extremely heavy, dead snake, but she manages to get somewhat of a grip on it.

As Rhino closes in, she throws the end of the chain and it wraps around his waist. She charges back towards him, feeling insane as she does, and hits the ground in a slide as his hands shoot out to grab her. She pops back up, scaling his massive leg, and hooks the chain around itself. He grabs her and throws her off, and she goes rolling across the rooftop, right to the edge. Rhino is so focused on her he doesn’t even notice what she did, doesn’t even hear the heavy clinking of chain dragging behind him. He runs straight at her seemingly unaware of the lack of ground behind her.

Just before he hits, Piper backflips off the edge of the building, then shoots two webs out and pulls herself back to the rooftop edge. Rhino drops like a stone, chain trailing behind him before it pulls taut with a sound like the world's deadliest bass chord. The crane above creaks in protest, but holds. There’s the sound of smashing glass below, but Piper is no longer concerned with Rhino. It would take him a while to get back to the roof. She heads back to the main fight.

When she arrives, she’s met with the sight of Vulture falling out of the sky, screeching all the way, right into Mysterio. They land in a heap on the ground, and Mysterio begins to wail dramatically, cradling his wrist to himself. Otto coils them both up in a tentacle, Vulture is practically foaming at the mouth the way he’s snarling at both Otto and Mysterio. Scorpion is still laying motionless on the ground, and a little thrill of fear goes through Piper at the thought he might not have survived a direct hit from Rhino.

She hurries over to him, rolling him onto his back, where he still gives no reaction. Piper shakes his shoulder vigorously.

“Mac? Hey, Mac? You need to wake up right now. Don’t make me give you CPR.” Finally a sign of life, Scorpion groans in disgust, batting her hands away.

“Do not even think about it, Spider.” Besides being a little breathless from a cracked rib or two, he seems to be fine overall, and Piper offers him a hand to help him to his feet. They turn to see Otto stuffing Mysterio and Vulture into the same port-a-potty. Vulture’s wings lay crumpled on the ground behind him, presumably having been ripped off by the actuators. After denting the side so the door won’t open, Otto leaves them to their muffled, cramped argument, and joins Piper and Mac.

“What a disappointing display.”

Piper’s blood runs cold. She turns to see Harry, Electro, and Sara, who has been bound in duct tape around her wrists, thighs and wrapped entirely around her head over her mouth. Sara cries out when she sees Mac, but whatever her words were they are completely drowned out by the tape across her mouth. Mac starts forward, but Piper puts out an arm to stop him.

“A fight isn’t the way to go here.” Piper tells him, using all of her strength to hold him back.

“That’s where you’re wrong Piper. A fight is exactly what’s going to go down here, just not between me and him.”

Piper meets Harry’s eyes for the first time, a sneer curling her lip.

“What are you talking about?” She demands.

“The fight will be between me and him.” He points at Otto, who gives a surprised laugh.

“Come now Osborn you can't be serious. You couldn’t hold your own in a fist fight with the average man. You couldn’t handle me.”

“Oh, but I am incredibly serious. You see, I’ve become so much more than you could ever imagine, and tonight I will prove that I am the superior man.”

Piper watches in horror as a viscous, black slime gathers around Harry, transforming him into something much bigger, much more frightening, and yet…familiar. Piper can see the way his suit, whatever it was made of, mirrors her own. Had the situation been different, she might’ve felt a little flattered that Harry was so inspired by her design, instead all she felt was revulsion.

Harry turns to Electro.

“Keep the other two out of my way, but do not harm Spider-Woman.”

Electro locks eyes with Scorpion, sparks flickering around him, and raises his hands. But he doesn’t aim in their direction, He aims at Harry.

There’s a crack like you’d hear during a thunderstorm, and a scream erupts from Harry as the electricity flows in and over him. Piper watches as Sara escapes, disappearing into the construction. Mac starts off after her, only for a thick tendril to shoot out from Harry and wrap around him entirely. They seem to explode from his body, and two more manage to snare Piper and Otto, and another goes after Electro, stopping the light show.

Harry is now nearly entirely visible, with only the smallest bit of black goo clinging to him. He pulls Electro in close, seething, until they are face to face.

“Traitor.” Harry hisses out, then using a tendril, flings Electro in the water tower, which bursts open in a shower of sparks and water, drenching him entirely and leaving him powerless.

An enraged Harry turns back to the three of them.

“Now, back to the matter at hand. I-”

CLANG.

Sara stands off to the side, now free from her bonds, holding a thick metal pipe she’d just swung at Harry’s exposed face. Harry stumbles backwards, snarling, and rips the pipe from her hands. He tosses it aside, where it bounces along the floor.

Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.

The noise seems to have some effect on Harry. His mouth opens, revealing a row of gigantic, sharp teeth and an inhuman roar emits from him. It’s shrill and somehow monstrous at the same time, making Piper’s hair stand on end. She watches as the slime that clings to him desperately throws itself in the opposite direction, trying to escape the sound. The tendrils surrounding them loosen ever so slightly, enough for Scorpion to wriggle free slightly and sink his stinger into the slime. Piper watches the bright green poison spread through the black goo.

Harry roars yet again, tendrils tightening around Scorpion, who he hurls into the scaffolding. The scaffolding caves in on itself, burying Mac under a pile of rubble.

“NO!” Shouts Sara, who then foolishly swings at Harry with her bare fists. He swats her hand aside, and then grabs her around the neck, lifting her right off the ground. Sara’s eyes get big as Harry begins to choke her.

“Let her go!” Piper demands. Harry looks at her, looks at Otto, then back to Piper and gives her a strange sort of smile. The tendril around her loosens significantly.

“As you wish.”

And then he tosses Sara off of the roof.

Piper is moving before she can even think of it, sprinting across the rooftop and following Sara off the edge of the building. She tucks in her arms and dives, and catches Sara at about halfway down. Piper anchors them to the side of the building, and readjusts Sara so she’s hanging off her back.

“Hold on very tight.” She advises Sara, whose arms tighten around her neck like a noose.

Piper shoots out two webs, stretches them as tight as possible, and slingshots the two of them up the side of the building. It’s not as effective as it would be with Piper alone, but it’s enough to get them in range where she can reach the edge of the roof with her webs.

There have been many times where her spidersense kicked in and it felt like time slowed down. As she and Sara clamber back up onto the roof, Piper gets the same sensation, only now it feels as though time has stopped entirely.

At first what she saw was confusing. Harry seemed to be embracing Otto, with one hand cupping his face, the other at his back. The two are still engulfed by the black slime. Too late, Piper realizes that Harry’s got one hand around Otto’s throat, and the other….the other hand is….

The other hand wraps around the metal connecting the actuators to Otto’s spine.

Even as she takes off at a dead sprint, she knows that she isn’t going to make it in time.

Someone is screaming.

Piper thinks it might be her.

Harry’s fingers dig into Otto’s skin, and with a horrible, wet squelch, pulls the metal away from his body. The actuators give out a metallic screech as they’re separated from their owner.

Piper tackles Harry at the same moment Otto’s body hits the floor.

She hurls him backwards, into a stack of metal pipes. The ties on them break as he slams into them, scattering all across the rooftop.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

The creature surrounding Harry screams in that inhuman way, and begins to writhe about wildly, before finally sloughing off entirely. It squirms away like some eldritch horror, away from the sound, away from Harry, and finally out of sight off the edge of the building. Harry tries to stand, but is immediately blasted back into the pipes by a blast of electricity from Electro, who stands with one arm wrapped protectively around Sara.

Piper turns her back to the scene, not caring to see more. She rushes over to Otto, gathering him in her arms. Pulling off her mask, she cups his cheek in her hand, turning his head to face her.

“Otto?” She asks softly. “Can you hear me, my love?”

There’s no response.

Piper can hear Sara crying somewhere behind her.

“Otto? Wake up. Please baby, you have to wake up.” She shakes his shoulder, the way she had done to Scorpion earlier. If she could just get him to wake up, to answer her…

She ignores the hot blood that soaks her lap. Doesn’t care to acknowledge the large hole where Otto’s spine had been. The blood that trickled from his mouth and nose meant nothing. He would wake up, she just had to try harder.

A large hand comes down on her shoulder, but she hardly notices.

“Please, Otto. Please, please wake up.”

Something wet and clear falls onto his face, and for a moment Piper thinks it’s begun to rain. Then she realizes it's coming from her. It’s her tears. When had she started crying? Why was she crying? Everything was fine.

There’s a loud bang, and a roar that signified Rhino’s return. The hand gripping her shoulder squeezes and then Mac’s voice is at her ear.

“He’s gone Piper, we have to go.”

Piper shakes her head.

“No. No we can’t. Not until he wakes up.”

The rooftop begins to shake as Rhino arrives.

“Piper…”

“NO.”

Mac sighs, wraps one arm around her and lifts her.

“NO! Get your goddamn hands off me Gargan!” She shoves him away. “I’m not leaving him!”

Scorpion grabs ahold of her again, wrapping both arms around her and picking her up right off the ground. Piper shouts and struggles, but she doesn’t fight him nearly as hard as she was capable of. Deep down, she knew, it was pointless.

The next few minutes are a haze, and Piper spends them kicking and screaming and calling Mac Gargan every name in the book. When he finally lets her down, she has no idea where they are.

“You son of a bitch! I told you to put me down!” She charges him, fists beating his chest, and he just stands there and takes it. It doesn’t take long until Piper is overcome by sobs, and when her legs give out Mac catches her under the arms.

He sinks to the floor with her, holds her while she shakes and weeps. Somewhere in the back of her mind Piper is aware of how ridiculous they must look together, but finds she doesn’t seem to care at the moment.

After a while, once she’s cried herself sick, eyes red and puffy, Piper realizes that they’re alone.

“Sara?” She asks, with a lilt of panic to her voice. But Mac appears unconcerned, and continues stroking her hair.

“She’s with Electro. She’s safe.”

“You should be with her.”

“I’m not leaving you like this Parker, so just forget it.”

Although perplexed by the compassion and comfort that Scorpion is offering, she decides to accept it. What else was there that she could do, after all?

The weeks that follow seem to blur together. Piper rarely left the house. Mary Jane was discharged from the hospital, and checked on her often. Most days when Ben was off to work, Mary Jane spent the day with Piper.

At some point, there was a funeral. Piper went, accompanied by Uncle Ben, Mary Jane, Mac and Sara. She stood stiffly at the graveside, not seeing what was in front of her. Refusing to read what the headstone said. There was an older woman there as well whose name Piper didn’t know. She had the same deep brown eyes as Otto. Piper thought about her a lot in the days after.

Piper spent a lot of the time with headphones jammed over her ears, listening to the police scanner. Or watching the news. She obsessively checked the Superheroes and Villains Sightings blog. Watching for anything, any sign of where Harry might be.

He had disappeared after the fight on the roof. Not even his father knew where he was, which she knew because Norman had called both her and Mary Jane looking for him. He was officially considered missing in the eyes of the police, but Piper knew better.

She was going to find him, come hell or high water.

#doc ock x oc #doc ock x original female character #doc ock x original character #eight arms to hold you #oc fic #doc ock #otto octavius #doctor octopus

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