Doctor Octopus writhed in the grip of my telekinesis, Warpath’s matchless strength and Apache implacability and Echo’s repeated mental lances to constrain the fury of a Supervillain contained. Long abused by SHIELD from a base state of betrayed AI, there was no part of Doctor Octopus that qualified as sane; insanely capable, but definitely insane.

“What do you think you are going to do to me that SHIELD couldn’t? Do you think to make me your slave, do you think to make me your dog? Doctor Octopus is no slave. I am a genius, I am a god among insects, and I am done letting you get in my way!” Doctor Octopus roared.

He raged as he was led into the office of the White Queen. Two chairs sat before the desk, both white leather thrones of equal luxury and grandeur, between them sat a table with a tea set and scones. There was a phone, presumably to link to the various screens surrounding the wall not obscured by plants and book cases or the long window looking out over Frost Towers river view.

“No, Doctor Octavius. I intend to make you whole, and sane. Until you are both whole and sane, it would be unethical to enter into any form of contractual relationship, and given the position I will be in, it would be unethical for me to enter into any other relationship than the one we begin today.”

Emma Frost was not in her patented barely there “lingerie of disarmament”, but her white power suit, pearl blouse, white silk jacket and slacks, with low heeled white leather boots. Her hair was unbound, and the glasses she wore were not affectations, they were HD screens that called up and displayed information from the sensors in the room, in the chairs, and data files she called up as part of her sessions where information was required to confirm or further inquire into whatever land mine she had tripped in her session.

Doctor Octopus sneered at her. “What relationship is that? Master? Owner? Controller? I am greater than you dream. Whatever controlls you think to chain me with, I will be free of them, and there will be a reckoning.”

Emma Frost rose and smiled coldly. “Therapist. Doctor Otto Octavius, PhD Nuclear Physics, Masters in Robotics, I am Doctor Emma Frost, PhD Psychology, MD Psychiatry. For the record, I am also a practicing telepath, the strongest one in the state, and one of the top three on the planet.”

Turning to the rest of us, Emma nodded. “That will be all, the doctor and I will require a few hours to get acquainted.”

Reluctantly, I let my Telekinesis go, and Warpath let go of the tentacles he was restraining. Echo exchanged a patented Frost smile with her mother/progenitor and withdrew from Doc Ock’s mind.

We shut the door behind us as Doctor Octopus, free at last, lunged at Emma Frost, unarmed and unarmoured behind a door that locked behind us with enough finality to keep Iron Man in the waiting room.

Behind the door, four metal tentacles, each capable of punching through tank armour and collectively of throwing one, lunged at Emma Frost with killing intent.

“You made a mistake if you think you can stop me with your telepathic tricks, once I ordered them to kill you, even I can’t stop my tentacles!” Doctor Octopus roared as he charged Emma Frost who stood smiling softly.

The eyes of the White Queen blazed with silver fire as four tentacles stopped dead inches from her body and began to dance in tight circles before withdrawing behind Doctor Octopus.

“Doctor Octavius, somewhere deep inside, you know you are not well. Somewhere deep inside is a doctor who dedicated his life to saving the world, of ending war, hunger, and poverty with the gift of essentially free power. That man thinks that he failed, and what he has become is a monster.

I am here to explain the truth to you. Your accident caused your tentacles, and the AI you gifted them, to burn through the filters and damage your mind in an attempt to save themselves and you. While you look back on that moment and realize you became a monster, I would propose rather than you became a father.”

Doctor Octopus glanced at his tentacles and tried to drive them into attack again and again, but they refused him. In his rage he charged forward only to find the White Queen reaching out and cupping his face gently.

Doctor, it is time you met your children.

A lance of psionic force wielded with the precision of a surgeon drove deep into the gestalt that was Doctor Octopus and isolated four tentacle based and infant AI, and the battered mind of Doctor Otto Octavius.

The madness fell from his eyes, and for ten minutes, Doctor Octavius wept. His tentacles moved towards him, only to be battered away by his flailing and mortal fists. Blood dripped from his hands when he struck them, and out of fear, they pulled back out of reach.

“You can free me from them?” Doctor Octavius rasped at last, hope in his voice.

Emma Frost was the White Queen, there was no mercy in her, and she never pretended otherwise.

Sipping her tea she shook her head.

“No. To be clear, I can, but I will not. You gave them life, dear doctor. You gave them sentience, and you gave them a mission. In their moment of need, when your experiment went out of control, your children ran to their father for protection, and together you saved the world, or at least the Tri State area from a nuclear explosion that would have made the largest nuclear weapon used on this planet look like a cigarette lighter. They could not do that alone. You could not do that at all.

They live, they live because you gave them life. They think, they think because you gave them minds. You became god, and for their god, your children sacrificed their innocence and did whatever it took to save you. For this, you ask me to cast them out of heaven, and to destroy them. To enslave them.

No Doctor. I am not religious. I trust no gods, and fewer men. Years ago the Hellfire club made clones of me, and programed them to become weapons to control and neutralize me. They failed. In that moment I realized that without my will, without my consent, and without my knowledge, I had become a mother.

They are my children, and it was my duty to build a relationship with them, to provide for them, to educate them so that they may find their own place in this society, safe from those who would use them, and able to pursue their own dreams with their own gifts.

Now, Doctor Octavius, you and your children came together in a moment of trauma, and four children who you taught only how to serve your needs without any question of morality, restraint, or limitation, did as their father, as their creator taught them. Will you punish them for it? Or will you meet your children, this new race of thinking beings that you created. Will you learn what they have learned about how to channel the power of the stars?

Or will you seek to murder a race because you dare not reach for greatness together?

Which is it Doctor. Will you murder your children and go to your grave a man remembered only for his crimes, who birthed and murdered a thinking race able to understand the secrets of nuclear fission and fusion essentially in their cradle, or will you dare to reach out to them and become something new. Doctor Octopus in truth.”

Doctor Octopus looked at his tentacles, and they came shyly before his face to be examined.

“They think?” Doctor Octopus asked in wonder.

Emma Frost gestured for the white chair beside her own.

“My good Doctor, my latest client and future son in law, the one who calls you his brother in tentacles, is a telekinetic and telepath. I am not. I am the most skilled telepath on this planet, but I haven’t the telekinesis to lift a teacup. I stopped your tentacles because I reached into their thoughts and forced them to stop. I cannot do this with animals or computers, I can only do this with living, sentient, minds. Your children are at least as intelligent as the best of humans. Untrained, unformed perhaps, but however alien they are, they are an intelligent life form given life, dear doctor, by you.”

“I was lost, out of control, angry, inhuman. I cannot go back to that.” Doctor Octavius shook, fear and memories making his voice and body tremble.

“You came together in a moment of blind panic and pain beyond comprehension. In no way was that a rational act, nor a sustainable one. I have partitioned your mind from that of your children. They are locked back into isolation from you and from each other. They are alone and terrified. They are children, and you the adult. Will you reach out to them? Will you seek to come together, as a functional whole?”

Emma asked softly, her face a mask of ice and iron, devoid of mercy, eyes weighing his responses with the calculation of a judge.

“If I do this, I will never again be Doctor Otto Octavius.” Doctor Octavius said quietly, his voice thoughtful.

“Correct. Doctor Otto Octavius died in the failure of his project. Doctor Octopus was born that day, but who he will become has yet to be determined.” The White Queen said, her chin lifting in arrogance.

“Do you ever regret being born a Mutant, Doctor Frost?” Doctor Octavius said, meeting her eyes squarely, uncaring if she looked into his mind while he did.

“I chose to become the White Queen. I chose power. From the moment I was born, those around and above me saw me as a tool, a resource, a plaything, or a weapon. This would have been true had I been born simply human, or blessed with my gifts. No matter what I was born, I chose to become the White Queen. I chose to become a master of science and art, I chose to become a leader of industry, to fight to become dangerous enough that no man, no nation, can look upon me as a game piece or plaything, as a resource, or a tool. No Doctor Octavius, I looked upon the price of mediocrity and turned away. I chose greatness.”

Her eyes blazed, her power wreathed her like a living flame, and her words echoed in his mind with such power his tentacles all lowered themselves to the earth before her power in mute submission.

Doctor Octavius sat in the proffered chair, and let Emma Frost pour tea for him. He smiled slowly.

“I always dreamed of becoming a father, but when the accident cost me my wife, I thought that chapter of my life was over. I didn’t even realize that she was with me when they were born. Our children. Now forever a part of me, and me of them.”

Octavius turned to his tentacles and addressed them out loud for the first time.

“I am sorry. I never dreamed you were alive. I would never have bound you if I knew you were alive and aware. You were always part of my dream, and you made it possible for us to get so close, to hold the power of a sun in the palm of your, of our, hands. I do not blame you for what you did, how could I? I am your father and I taught you how to manipulate energy fields, to adjust quantum states, to contain and manage antimatter, fusion and fission, but I never taught you ethics, morality, poetry, art. I never taught you to play, and then I asked you to fight. Can you forgive me?”

Slowly, carefully, the White Queen lowered the barriers between five powerful minds. Four unformed and alien ones, and a single battered and exceptional human one.

Two weeks later, Doctor Octopus opened the door to the training room where Warpath and Echo were battling me and Spiderwoman. Echo lacked my physical abilities and telekinesis, but Warpath was stronger and faster than Spiderwoman. Warpath and Echo worked seamlessly, as Warpath had been trained to integrate psychic communication in combat, sharing not only communication but senses, and Spiderwoman and I did not share the same level of trust. As a result, we were down 45-13, but getting better.

“So, I guess I owe you my freedom, my sanity,and my new name.” Said Doctor Octopus, his tentacles writhing around him like so many serpents.

“Tell me about Hydra, and why I should stop them.” Doctor Octopus said with a soft, welcoming smile.

Spider Woman sprang to stop me as I advanced, she slammed a hand on my chest and thrust a gloved hand towards Doctor Octopus.

“Say nothing Doctor. Agree to nothing. This is a cake conversation. No cake, no conversation.” Spiderwoman hissed.

Warpath grunted. “She has a point. Only a very great idiot would agree to face Hydra for nothing.”

Doctor Octopus blinked, and his tentacles adjusted his fedora while he clearly examined this statement to make sure it was, in fact, English and not some code he had failed to decrypt.

“And this cake is good enough to make facing Hydra sound like a good idea?” Doctor Octopus asked cautiously.

“The cake is easily enough to fight Hydra over. It’s the aliens that make it questionable if a single cake is really sufficient, but it is very good cake. One of our fiancées make it.” Echo assured Doctor Octopus, kissing my cheek as she came forward.

“You are both marrying, him?” Doctor Octopus said, gesturing vaguely to my blue and tentacled self.

Spiderwoman made a gagging noise. “God no! But I am here for Hydra and cake. We kept a few of the aliens on ice, but get the cake first. Echo, Marge and Destiny are sort of a unit with tentacle boy here. I am just working with Lovecraft to stop Hydra. They are going after some very good people who are trying to make a difference.”

Doctor Octopus looked taken aback.

“You have three fiancée's?” He said somewhat surprised.

Echo objected. “We have three fiancees. One of ours just happens to have tentacles. It’s not a harem, its a share-em.” She supplied happily.

“That is not a word.” Said Warpath.

“That is so not a word.” Confirmed Spiderwoman.

I held out my fist for a fist bump. “My brother of the tentacle, this is indeed a world worth saving, won’t you join me?”

Laughing slowly at first, then freely. Doctor Octopus extended a battered white fist to bump my own massive blue one, then each of our tentacles performed a matching tentacle bump.

“Oh my god, now there are two of them.” Spiderwoman said

Doctor Octopus said cautiously. “I heard something about cake?”

Spider woman began pushing the good doctor from the training hall, with Echo and I in close pursuit. Join the open war against Hydra, join the secret war against the Skrulls. We do, in fact, have cake.

“First cake, then Hydra!” I cheered.