Gahhh ok! time to unpack!
Dr. Olivia "Otto" Octavius had been working at RiverHaven National Lab under the Department of Energy and the Defense Department for a few years after having her Nuclear Physics doctorate program sponsored by a hefty military grant. Up to this point she had viewed her career path as descending steps into nessicary evils, procurement and disposal of radioactive ore was never her department in the first place, and it's not like she ever got a word in about how the military should use her research. Besides, how else was she supposed to study her muse, the atom? As much as she had passion for her study, controlling the delicate balance of heavy nuclei, she wasn't particularly thrilled about the reality of her job position. Working long hours with copious men who didn't respect her and got paid better then her for it. Otto resented this, how could people so foolish as to not even understand a butch woman hope to ever truly comprehend the complexities of nature? She kept these thoughts under wraps to keep her job, as she dreamed of ways She could carry out a whole experiment on her own.
This eventually lead her back to Norman Osborn, a friend from her grad school days. Norman had recently acquired his fathers company, OsCorp, and was looking to expand R&D operations to include pharmaceuticals and bio-tech. Together Norman and Otto solidified the idea for the actuator harness set up, and Otto was able to get her DOD bosses to contract OsCorp to build them. This takes about 5 years of Otto splitting her time between nuclear research at RiverHaven and bio-tech work with OsCorp. During this time Norman also expanded OsCorp's operations further and founded their Transhumanist division based on Otto's harness work. This is where Otto met a young Flint Marko and developed the material end of the Sandman and Rhino projects. Part way into these continuing changes at OsCorp, the DOD actuator-harness contract ended and Otto went back to RiverHaven full time preparing to demonstrate her new autonomous safety tech to the world.
Up to this point, the harness and actuator arms worked by partial external control mechanism on the main harness belt itself along with partial neurological integration at surgically implanted contact points along the spinal column and four large contacts where the arms connect. The actuator arms and harness belt come off in two separate pieces, the arms themselves also outfitted with gamma radiation and EM measurement devices.
When every part of the harness and chosen reaction was ready, Otto thought she was demonstrating her crowning achievement to the world. What she got instead was a reaction gone critical.
She doesn't like to linger too much on the details of exactly how it went wrong. Otto body spent months being moved between hospitals and treatment centers for her burns and acute radiation poisoning. Otto mind spent that near year between the iodine treatments and insensitive doctors going over every step of the math from scratch, and it was apparent something had snapped. All those anxious emotional voices in her head mostly got outsourced to her actuators, leaving only a bitter and calculated woman behind. Doctor Octavius came under the impression someone sabotaged her work, they never wanted someone like her there in the first place, this was only a matter of time.
When her body was finally healed enough that the doctors finally started discussing ways to remove the actuator harness that was fused to her skin during the accident, Otto freaked out! These were still her greatest creations and they were apart of her! The actuator arms acted before her brain could fully process her emotions, lashing out at hospital staff and leading to a number of injuries/casualties. Next thing Otto knows she's on the run from the law and given up all pretenses of working for the system that would rather see her dead. She starts her criminal career as Doctor Octopus to fund and continue her research into the atom on her own.
stormborns
amandla
2087
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