Lady Viper’s briefing to her tactical teams was crisp and professional.

“Invictus Life is our target. The key personnel are flagged in your HUD facial recognition software, and will be carated blue. These personnel will be taken down by hand, as we cannot risk unknown medical vulnerabilities costing us assets with lethal reaction to standard ICER stun rounds.

Those personnel identified as maintenance, security, finance, logistics will be carated red and are to be engaged with ICER rounds, disabled and secured to be evaluated for potential hostage usage or demonstration kills as required during interrogation and conversion of identified assets.

The stakes of this strike cannot be overstated. Invictus Life holds the key to the next generation of super soldiers, not mutants or dangerously unstable transhumans, but Hydra soldiers given super reflexes, enhanced speed, integrated computer targeting and communication. Hydra will at last live up to its name, many heads sharing a single consciousness, a dozen troopers acting as one, making Captain America’s shield as useless as a screen door in space, the speed and instincts of Spiderman or Daredevil as effective as a five year olds tears against a school shooting.

What we do tonight ensures the dominance of Hydra on every shadow battlefield, until our tentacles close upon the throat of every government in the world, and we can at last step from the shadows and take our place at last as the rightful rulers of humanity!

HAIL HYDRA!”

The Hydra troopers checked their HUD, sweeping over each other to see the green carating of their IFF show the green of friend, then testing the target profiles of known targets and confirming their HUD careted blue for high value target, weapons hold. They smiled, this would be a cake walk.

Bob the Hydra Agent remembered Team 12, his friends Cristobel and Grant had limbs that bent the wrong way since their attempted kidnapping met a super powered intervention.

“Lady Viper, ma’am?” Bob asked softly, raising his hand.

Lady Viper smiled. It was hard not to smile at Bob. He was dead average in capability on the Hydra scale, but Bob was honestly too nice a guy to survive in Hydra, yet somehow, like a mascot, he had somehow not had his throat cut or thermos spikes with flesh dissolving nanites. His questions were always what everyone was thinking, but way too smart to ask, lest they be shot for insolence.

“Go ahead Bob, if it’s a reasonable question I won’t shoot you.” It went without saying that you realized if the question was unreasonable when people could see daylight through the tunnel running through your skull from the path of the Hydra Blaster on Lady Viper’s hip.

“Thank you ma’am. I heard that Team 12 ran into Spider Woman when they attempted an asset extraction from Invictus Life last week. Do we have any specific orders or countermeasures to employ if she shows up during the mission?” Bob asked.

The two Hydra tactical teams collectively winced. In Hydra, pointing out the boss’ plan was about to get wrecked by some caped crusader was a good way to get shot to death during the pre-battle briefing as a defeatist (as the boss’s plan is clearly perfect), and in the post battle critique as withholding vital tactical information and thus dooming the (otherwise clearly perfect) plan.

Lady Viper smiled and patted Bob on the shoulder.

“Thank you for bringing that up Bob. This plan is so critical to Hydra’s dominance on the battlefield that Hydra central has sent one of the Hydra Council in person to assure that this operation does not have to worry about any super powered problems.”

The door to the briefing room slid open, and the stomp, stomp, stomp of over a ton of armoured composite sounded as the green armoured form of Kraken stepped through. The whine of what advanced races would have recognized as the standard Kree anti-armour cannon sounded as the heavy arm pylon mounted cannon crackled with cyan plasma, and lights blinked in ominous sequnence over the advanced Kraken armour.

“In the event that Spiderwoman, Captain America, Iron Man, or the Black Panther and his girl power dance troop show up, I will blast them into a fine pink mist over about half a block, if someone decides to call in F-35's or roll the 10th Armoured Division, then the only difference is the size of the debris field. Does that answer your question, Bob?” The voice of Jake Fury, the Kraken, sounded through his voice modulator to be slightly deeper than that of his hated brother Nick, and held computer calculated harmonics to enhance its subconscious acceptance by anyone hearing it. If he wasn’t the natural leader his brother the dedicated SHIELD soldier and living legend, Nick Fury, was; he didn’t have to be. He cheated.

Bob flashed a big thumbs up. “Thank you sir, thank you ma’am. Hail Hydra!”

He joined Hydra so his wife and kids could get medical benefits for pre-existing health conditions. He didn’t mind risking his life to keep those benefits, but he wanted to go home after the assault.

The two tac teams relaxed. They had been tense knowing the stakes, and knowing that somehow, someway, some damned superhero or heroine always turned up when the fate of the world was on the line, and when that happened, the boss was never wrong, and the troops were always expendable. Not that any of them were stupid enough to point that out. Thank Hydra for Bob!

Meanwhile at Invictus Life, Anna Kendrick was looking at Ronold Sung with wide eyed amazement.

“Doctor Octopus?” She repeated as she watched the TruTube videos of Doctor Octopus fighting Spiderman, climbing walls with his tentacles and hurling cars at the wall crawling hero as they fought across New York’s skyline.

Ronald Sung showed other footage of Doctor Octopus controlling his nuclear fusion experiment, of his using the tentacles for fine construction and adjustment of the machinery, and even soldering circuit boards and making microciruit connections while the Doctor’s flesh and blood eyes and hands worked on other tasks.

“Look at the fine control he has, these are not preprogramed robotic actions, he is directing them to perform tasks as delicate as microsurgery using a connection to his spine without a dedicated nerve trunk because human beings at no point in their evolution had eight limbs, let alone tentacles. He cracked the controlled interface.” Ronald insisted.

I found it interesting to be pitching this wearing Ronald’s mind as I wore his illusion as my body. Ronald himself, because I wore his living brain as a shell over my own, was indeed waxing excited. He never dreamed of a solution to the problem, and while he would never be Dr Anna Krendrik’s equal, he was good enough to get on the team, and knew enough of the project to see how many steps forward Anna Kendrik would be able to go once the interface issue was resolved.

“But he is insane, and a criminal, isn’t he?” Anna Kendrik whispered.

“Not anymore. I can vouch for that” Said Spiderwoman, placing her hand on Anna’s shoulder. Every man in the room desperately wanted to agree with Spiderwoman as her pheremones, the Spider Queen effect, made every male want to agree with her, serve her, and of course, get closer to her.

Anna fought the instinctive urge to snap at Spiderwoman, as much as the Queen effect triggered every male to please her, every female responded to its instinctive challenge, but Spiderwoman had saved her from no less than three Hydra kidnap attempts, the first by criminals, but the last by a fully armoured and equipped Hydra strike team. She KNEW Spiderwoman would never put her in danger.

“So what changed, how did Doctor Octopus suddenly get sane?” Anna Kendrik asked somewhat snarkily.

“I got a really good therapist, and some family counselling. Doctor Kendrik I presume? I have taken the time to read your published papers and Ronald shared your recent research. I admit you humble me. I had developed several of the technologies you had, and some that you needed, but it never once occurred to me to use them for medicine, to use them to restore limbs and function to wounded people.

Even before my accident, I only ever looked to the sun, to the stars, to the future unlimited power could bring. It never occurred to me that I could be making a difference and changing lives here today.

I lacked your vision, still lack your vision. I don’t honestly know how to finish what you have started, but Ronald is right, I can hand you the solution to your current roadblock, and perhaps a few future ones.” Doctor Octopus said, his tentacles doffing his fedora smoothly as he took her hands in his human ones.

Anna looked at the tentacles as they moved around her like living beings, like serpents of living metal, eyeless, yet seeing. They moved with smoothness and precision, not in clean robotic arcs and lines, but natural organic motion. Like they were indeed a part of him. Her heart beat faster as her mind began to trace new possibilities.

“Doctor Octavius, an honour to meet you. As much of a surprise as that statement would have been to me yesterday, I truly mean it.” Anna Kendrik said with the frankness that made so many of her business meetings go poorly, but which advanced her progress when working with fellow scientists immeasurably.

Doctor Octopus shook his head. “Not quite. I am truly Doctor Octopus. You see, I did not settle for the path that you are mapping, I did not trust my own brain to control my tentacles as they needed. They are alive, and aware. It just took us time to come together and figure out who we were.

You see Doctor Kendrik, if I had trusted my own mind enough to use my technology the way you are, I would have trusted my own mind to control them, but I lacked your vision. Of course, now I have my children, so we together might be able to help you learn how to integrate new limbs and even functional organs to those who have lost them.”

Doctor’s Kendrik and Octopus were staring into each other’s eyes in a meeting of the minds that promised a new world for amputees and spinal cord injuries when every alarm in the world began to blare at once.

“Building alarm is tripped. Hard lines to the outside are down. Wireless network is down, hell even cell phones are being jammed!” I reported, doing my best panicking Ronald impression. Ronald was good at panic.

In order to shortcut the conversation, I pulled the camera feed from the front and back doors on a split screen on the monitor in front of Anna.

“Hydra!” Spiderwoman swore as one team behind a green woman in tight fitting tactical gear moved through the front door. A figure in green power armour raised an arm with an attached pylon cannon like the cartoon Megatron from the Transformers and blew the back door and part of the wall away in a single bolt of cyan lightning.

“There is no way out!” Whispered Anna Kendrik, terrified at what Hydra would do to her people, and would do with what they were creating.

“You let me worry about Lady Viper and the clowns at the front.” Snarled Spiderwoman, her fists crackling with electric power.

“But what about the monster in the back?” Doctor Anna Kendrik, PhD in oh god I am not a superheroine, shouted hysterically.

“That is Kraken, who is named after a giant squid monster out of ancient mythology. I am Doctor Octopus, a much more modern monster. I suppose it is time to find out who is indeed the terror of the deep.”

Doctor Octopus tipped his hat with one tentacle, took Doctor Kendrik's hand up to his lips with another and kissed her knuckles with old world courtesy.

“You will pardon me if I must put our collaboration on hold until I have dealt with your intruder problem. Ronald, would you be so good as to conduct me to your back entrance? I am afraid I didn’t memorize your floor plan.”

I set the routine in motion on the computer to blank the cameras on the back entrance as we approached. To investigators, it would seem to be a part of the attack of the Kraken armour or maybe the effect of the tentacle's own energy fields. In fact, it would be because Ronald Sung had to die off camera, and Kraken had to be taken down without witnesses if I was going to carry out my infiltration.

It was time for battle. Time to hunt Hydra.