//------------------------------//
// Cherry On Top 
// Story: Along Came A Spider 
// by Onomonopia 
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With a proud smile, Otto held out his hoof and the third of his spider bots that he had created climbed off of him and onto the rooftop he was standing on. It then began to crawl away from him to the side of the building, where it vanished over the side to begin its mission. With his third both now operational, Otto walked back into the building and took on a far more serious expression.

'Hopefully they will be able to alert me to any new kinds of danger that appear in this city,' Otto mused silently as he pondered his next move. 'But now I must prepare for what awaits me tonight. If the information I forced out of that fool is correct, and I have no reason to doubt that it isn't, the one who is responsible for these abominations will be waiting for their shipment of creatures. The perfect time to prepare an ambush to finally bring them down.'

Otto reached his workshop and threw open the door, having modified them so that they were incredible heavy and only someone with his strength would be able to open the at all. As he slammed the doors shut behind him, he glanced over at the bench to see that the spider suit remained unmoved from where he had left it. He approached the table and picked up a vial of goo, something that made him scowl.

"As I thought, the materials that I tried to substitute for the webbing formula didn't work," Otto stated as he poured the goop into the trash, before gathering together the materials that he had used to create that batch. 'Perhaps I should use a stronger bonding agent. This would be a lot easier if these ponies had the same kind of science that we have on Earth...no Otto, there is no point in whining about what you don't have. If it was easy it wouldn't be a worthy challenge of your genius.' 

He reached into the suit to check his remaining web cartridges before a knocking on his door derailed his train of thought. He walked to the doors and slid them open to find a red faced Coco on the other side, who had apparently tried to open the doors with her own strength. "Coco, for what reason could you be bothering me within my lab so early in the morning?"

"One, it's not early in the morning, it's almost twelve," Coco corrected for Otto, who gave her a blank stare in reply. "Second, if you could tear yourself away for your plans to take over the world, I need you to go and pick up an order for me."

"An order? This is rare indeed Coco, that you would trust me with such a mission when you have that other fool who would bend other backwards for you," Otto said in a snide tone, but a hard stare from Coco temporarily suppressed his arrogance. "Oh very well, I was not doing anything of that importance anyway. What do you need me to secure for you?"

"It's not much, just a simple accessory to my dress, but I can't stress how important it is," Coco said as she gave Otto a picture that had been cut out from a magazine. "This is the piece that will bring my dress together and if I don't have it everything I have been working on will have been ruined."

"Surely you are exaggerating."

"I'm not exaggerating in the least. And my name's not Shirley," Coco replied with a giggle at her own joke, while Otto just sighed. He took the picture from her and, after closing and locking the door to his workshop behind him, strolled out into the streets to find it packed as always.

"I do not know what is harder to suffer through. Her jokes or the congestion of this city," Otto growled to himself as he slammed into the crowd of ponies that were blocking his path, knocking some of them off of their hooves. 'That was one advantage of being a villain, I never had to put up with traffic like this. Everyone ran away from me when they saw the man with the four metal tentacles.'

It took Otto a while to track down the post office, as he was still not used to the new city despite the similarities, but eventually he managed to find his way to his destination. A growl of rage escaped his lips when he found that everyone and their sister had decided to come to the post office that day, creating a massive line that went all the way to the doors. For a brief moment he consider just throwing the ponies out of the way and simply taking Coco's order, but with a sigh he resigned himself to standing in line.

'You are not the villain you once were. You may not be a hero, but you can never go back to being a villain. That side of me I will make sure stays gone,' Otto thought to himself before he lost himself in his thoughts, remembering the days of old as he stood silently in line.

He flashed back to all the battles he had with the heroes of Earth, with most of them being with a web clad hero that he had hated so much when he was alive...and how he only now realized how right Spiderman had been all along. His thoughts then shifted from the spider and to another human. One named Anna. A small smile creased his lips at the thought of her and a moment later he was lost in his memories of the days they had spent together.

"Well well, given your demeanor I didn't think it was possible for you to make an expression that happy." 

Otto ripped himself free of his thoughts and turned his head to see the smiling face of a mare with a crimson mane, immediately placing Otto on guard against the smiling pony. "Cherry Bomb. This is a surprise for me as well. I only thought that you left your coffin when you needed to find a soul to suck dry."

"Oh, clever my dear Otto. How long did it take you to think that one up?" she asked him with a giggle that made Otto's skin crawl. He glanced to his side to see that the line had slightly moved up and he took two steps to catch up to it, but to his annoyance he found that Cherry Bomb moved in step with him. 

"Why are you bothering me, woman? Isn't there a poor soul somewhere that needs tormenting?" Otto seethed at the mare, who smirked in response to his question.

"Why yes there is. And I'm standing right next to him," she replied as her smile grew even larger, infuriating the doctor. "In all honesty Otto, I'm simply here to pick up an order of my own. And with this line I thought that it would be boring, but imagine my surprise when I saw a friendly face amongst this crowd of strangers. So instead of being bored, I thought I could talk with them and catch up a bit."

"A friendly face is going a bit far. I am fairly certain that neither of us like the other," Otto reminded her as the line moved up another step.

"That's because we haven't had the chance to get to know each other," Cherry Bomb replied as she moved closer to Otto. Though he held his ground and refused to be moved by her mere presence, Otto was also surprised that his spider sense was not going off like the last time they had met. "Come now Otto, why would you think of me as such a terrible pony?"

"Because you harass my friend, insult her and her work, and-" Otto began before cutting himself off, not wanting to inform the mare of his suspicions about the robbery. "You managed to defeat my associate whose physical strength is beyond that of a normal pony. You have given me plenty of reasons to think of you as a terrible pony."

"Well...you've got me there," Cherry Bomb admitted before she laughed, a laugh which caused the spider sense to begin to tingle. "But honestly, I've got nothing against Coco. She's simply competition. And of course I don't want my competition to succeed, so I'm going to do what I can to make sure they fail. Even if you like her, surely you can see where I'm coming from."

Otto had to bite back his reply due to the reason that he knew that the mare was correct. He recalled that one of the reasons he had become Spiderman in the first place was to show that he was superior to Peter, who he had considered his greatest rival. 'Despite my loathing for this mare, there is nothing that I can say to her without being a hypocrite.'

"Oh don't give me that look, I'm not going to hurt the poor dear. Even without my interference I'm certain that she will self-destruct on her own," Cherry admitted with another laugh that cranked up the dial on the spider sense. "But even though she is my competition, I find that she is the least interesting pony in her boutique. That other stallion is fun to mess with, there's no doubt. But then there's you."

"Pardon?"

"The mysterious stallion who is far stronger than he lets on, is absolutely brilliant in both his way of thinking and acting. And my favorite part, is hiding something from his past that causes him to act completely different than the way he used to," Cherry whispered to Otto, who managed to keep his face looking blank as the mare smiled up at him. "Who are you really, dear Doctor Octavius? And what do I have to do to find out?"

"Allow me to make this perfectly clear for you, as you seem to be incapable of realizing when you are in over your head. If you try anything that will hurt Coco or destroy her dream, I will personally show you the side of me that you are trying so desperately to see. And I promise you will not like it," Otto replied in a low whisper that was filled with his most dangerous of intent. His sudden shift in tone caused Cherry to raise her eyebrows, but to Otto's annoyance he found that her eyes were filled with curiosity instead of fear.

"Well then, it's a date," Cherry replied with a sly smile before she slipped past Otto to the counter, causing Otto to blink while wondering where the line went. After a moment Cherry slipped past Otto and raced to the door, turning around only to wink at Otto before she took off into the city. Otto watched her go with narrowed eyes before he approached the counter himself.

"I am here to pick up Miss Coco's delivery," Otto said to the pony, who dropped off a package on the counter. Otto tucked it under his arm and walked out of the office, his mind still on what Cherry had said to him. 'Am I that easy to read? Coco was able to figure out a chapter of my past and even Cherry Bomb was able to learn a good deal about me despite us only meeting once.'

'But the biggest question I have here is why did my spider sense not react to her like it did before?' Otto asked himself as he walked back to the boutique. 'Last time it reacted as if she was a mugger with a gun, but now it was only wary of her? Perhaps it was because she didn't dare try anything in front of so many, thus her intent to harm was down? Cursed spider sense, always giving me problem whether I'm fighting against it or using it.'

He put those thoughts in the back of his mind and instead began to formulate plans on what he would be doing later that night. By the time he got back to the boutique he had already formulated a fairly solid battle plan based on what he knew about his foe and their monsters. He broke free of his thoughts in time to see Coco racing over to him, a huge smile on her face when she saw the package.

"Thank the heavens you got it!" Coco exclaimed as she snatched the package out of Otto's grasp despite him clutching it fairly tightly. She tore it open and glanced inside, sighing in relief when she pulled out a thin, blue ribbon that sparkled like the stars. "Finally, the last piece of my dress is here! Thank you so much Otto!"

Coco gave Otto a tackle hug before she raced over to the dress she was keeping under a cover, throwing back the cover just enough for her to slip beneath the cover. Otto shook his head at her as he turned to leave, but a moment later Coco emerged from behind the cover and waved at Otto to gain his attention.

"Soooo...since the dress is essentially completed and since I've got nothing else I've got to do today...do you want to hang out or go somewhere?" Coco asked Otto in an elusive tone, but she did glanced over at Otto despite her staring at the ceiling. Otto raised an eyebrow at her before he glanced at the clock to see that it was already later in the day, causing his eyes to narrow.

"I am sorry Coco, but there is something that I am doing tonight that I cannot miss," Otto replied in a kind tone, doing everything he could to not let his face reveal his intentions. Coco's face fell for a second, but before she could say anything Otto walked over to his workshop and slipped the door open, practically slamming it behind him as he walked to his workbench. He glanced over the schematics that he had "acquired" for where the deal was supposed to take place, going over his battle plan once more.

'I may not be the hero they see me as, but I know how to bring down a villain or two,' Otto thought to himself as he glanced over at the spider suit, face falling slightly. 'Fighting in the dark during the middle of the night. That is fitting for an anti-hero like me.'