The smile that Otto had allowed to cross his face over the past couple of days was nowhere to be found when he descended the stairs the following morning, the morning after Parker had spoken to him for the first time. Otto was angry, confused and not sure how much pull the illusion had over his own body. And he knew it had to be an illusion, for the real Parker was still alive and back on Earth.
"Yet why can I not banish this illusion from my mind?" Otto asked himself as he sat at a table and stared at the fabric that rested upon it, never hearing Coco's words when she walked into the room and tried to talk to him. "Or a better question is why does it continue to pester me even when I disposed of my villainous side? I have not been a saint on this world, but I have tried."
"I wish that I could contact that silver being that spoke to me weeks ago, but I have no where to know where he is. He seemed like a being with a lot on his plate," Otto pondered before he crossed his forearms and leaned back in the chair. "Actually, I wish I had access to the technology that I had on Earth. Then I would be able to scan my mind and find out why this anomaly continues to bother me."
"But what did he mean by fail? I have defeated every foe that has come my way and saved countless lives. How is that failing?" Otto asked aloud before he glanced up and realized that Coco had been staring at him from across the table the entire time. "Um, how much of that did you hear?"
"All of it. Otto, what's this about a being called Parker plaguing your mind?" Coco asked, but almost immediately Otto closed his mouth and bowed his head in an effort to show that he wasn't going to talk. Coco gave him a look that said "really?" before she let out a sigh and rested her head upon one of her hooves. "Come on Otto, you can talk to me. I really want to help you with your problems, the way you helped me."
"Thank you my dear, but this is not something that you can help me with. It is a personal battle," Otto replied curtly, but Coco shifted her arms and gave him a stare that told him she wasn't going to be taking no for an answer. "And even if this problem could be solved with mere words alone, how are you certain that you can aid me? Perhaps my problem would be too much for your feeble mind to handle."
"Now I know that something's bothering you, if you've reverted back to your old way of speaking," Coco replied in a serious tone that practically cemented her to the chair across from Otto, getting a snarl out of the doctor. "So from what I've gathered, your being plagued by the memories or an illusion of a being called Parker and you are wonding why he said you would fail. Am I right so far?"
"You are right in the most basic of senses. But that is all you have," Otto replied in a less than friendly tone, getting Coco to raise an eyebrow at his response. "You talk as if you are an expert on the subject, but you know nothing of my plight or of the man that bothers me."
"Perhaps. But I do know that Parker was the Spider before you took on the role." All of the color drained from Otto's face as Coco spoke these words, leaving his magnificent brain to try to form any denial to what she had just fingered him with. He stammered out a few words that remotely sounded like he was asking how she knew, but all Coco did was smile and slightly shake her head.
"Like I said when I figured out that you were a supervillain, I'm sharp. Let's be real here, Otto. Every time I'm in danger and you're nowhere to be around, the Spider appears. I've also noticed a good deal of black and red thread going missing in my shop. The same colors of the Spider's suit," Coco pointed out to Otto, who silently cursed himself for not being more discreet with his use of her items. "But the final nail in the coffin was that the Spider insults me in the same way you do. Not to mention you didn't do much to change your voice."
"And once more it seems that I have underestimated your intelligence," Otto admitted with a bitter smile at his own stupidity, figuring that she had him caught.
"But I will say that I was surprised when I put the pieces together. For somepony who hates heroes as much as you do and with your past as a supervillain, well, you'd be the last pony that I'd expect to become a superhero," Coco said before her eyes took on a more curious look. "Why did you become the Spider? Why after a life of crime did you decide to become the very thing you hated?"
"As you said when you pinned me for being a supervillain. Because of the Spiderman. Or to be more precise, Parker. Brace myself my dear, you're in for a tale," Otto warned her before he took in a deep breath and flashed back to the day everything had changed for him.
"As you said, I was a villain. A villain that eventually found himself on deaths doorstep. So in a last attempt to save myself I transferred my very mind into the brain of my most hated foe. Spiderman. I took over his body as if it was my own and left him in my own dying body."
"Yeesh that's rough. What happened to him? Did he die in your body?"
"No. Even in a broken body he still had the will that I could never defeat. He made his way to me, even in a body that didn't have long, and we had what I believed would be our final battle. We clashed and I was triumphant. I stood over him as he died in my body," Otto said with a moment of pride before he sighed and lowered his head. "But while I won the battle, Parker changed me that day. As we shared brains and bodies, he used that connection to show me his entire life, everything that had lead up to him being a hero and after. Everything that made the Spiderman."
"And in the face of such a life, I learned what it truly meant to be a hero. What it meant to use the power that you were gifted with for the benefit of others instead of revenge or personal gain. That with great power came great responsibility." Otto said those words in such a quiet way that he seemed to revere the words. "I promised Parker as he laid dying that I would take his place, that I would become the Spiderman in his place. But then I promised myself that I would be even better. That I would be the Superior Spiderman, ten times the hero Parker ever was."
"And what happened?"
"I failed," Otto said in a whisper. "I reverted a bit to my old ways, using fear and violence while trying to make my own life perfect. And it all came crashing down when an old foe of both Spiderman and myself waged war against my home. And I couldn't stop him, no matter how hard I tried."
"But I stubbornly held on, believe that I was still the right hero to save the city...until the Goblin dangled a little girl in front of a subway and I almost didn't act to save her," Otto said with bitter regret in every word. "That was when the memories of Parker made themselves known to me the second time and made the choice for me. He told me to save her and I did. That was when I realized the truth. I was not the superior hero. I was never a hero to begin with."
"So what did you do?"
"I erased my own memories from Parker's mind so that he could save the world...saved those that I had come to love," Otto said. "And in the process, killing myself. Or so I believed, until I woke up in this land with a new body that somehow managed to retain all of Parker's powers. Then you found me and the rest you know. So there you have my tale. The tale of the Inferior Spiderman."
Coco lowered her head and thought about what Otto had told her for a long time, before she rose out of her seat and walked over to him. She stared at the scientist for a moment before she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him into a close hug.
"I am so sorry that you had to go through all of that," she said with sympathy in every word before she broke the hug and smiled at Otto. "But Otto, even if you think you've failed you're still a hero."
"That is a lie, Coco. A hero would have never done the things that I have done," Otto spat back with disgust at himself. Coco opened her mouth to answer, but her words were interrupted by the glass in the ceiling being shattered. Otto grabbed the mare and leapt back as a colossal beast landed in the center of the boutique, a monster with six arms that were all armored with rock. The center of it looked like a massive boulder, except for the green center that instantly made the spider sense blare.
"Spider. Today you die!" the monster roared as it wound up a punch.
"Stay behind me!" Otto roared as the beast lunged at him, getting Otto to swear as he took the punch the monster threw head on lest it hit the mare behind him. With his spider strength and his adhesive abilities he managed to remain rooted in place, but the blow still hurt like crazy. "I was wondering when your master would make a move! And I also see that Coco isn't the only one that figured out my identity."
"My master has had enough of your interference. He has gathered everything that he needed from you, this granting me with the honor of killing you and making him proud," the stone monster replied with a far more intelligent voice that Otto was used to. Otto roared as he pushed the monsters hand back, only to be attacked by two more fists that swung towards his head.
Otto glanced over his shoulder to see that Coco had gotten clear of the battle, allowing Otto to leap over the limbs to avoid them before throwing out a kick that caught the monster in the side of its rocky head. But while the blow did snap the monsters head to the side, Otto snarled when he saw that his attack didn't really didn't do any real damage.
"Your master must really be getting desperate if he sent his greatest pet to deal with me," Otto snarked at the stone monster while leaping back onto the wall to avoid an attack, before he leapt onto the ceiling. "I assume that is what you are, since you seem to speak so well. His greatest toy."
"Desperate? The only one that should be feeling that right now is you," the rock monster promised before it lunged onto the ceiling, driving two of its hands into the ceiling to anchor itself before it began to attack with its other four arms. Otto dodged them as best as he could, but eventually he was forced to leap off of the ceiling and land on one of the tables below. The monster dropped down and Otto hurled himself out of the way, hearing the crunch as the monster landed right where he had been standing.
"You thought that you were a hero. But all along you were nothing more than a plaything," the monster said before it extended two palms towards Otto, spraying forth intense waves of fire. Otto was fast enough to dodge the flames, but to his fury he found that the flames began to consume the boutique. With a bellow of fury he lunged at the monster, driving both of his hind hooves into its chest to send it crashing into the wall.
"I may not be the hero that everyone thinks I am, but I am still more than strong enough to deal with you," Otto promised the monster as he landed on its chest and brought a hoof back as he prepared to shatter whatever was causing the green glow. But the monster let out a smirk before it unleashed a blast of green energy from its chest, hurling Otto off of it and through the metal door that hid his workplace.
"OTTO!" Coco cried out from behind a table as his motionless body collapsed onto the floor of the workroom, not knowing that her words turned the attention of the monster to her. Otto let out a groan as he pushed himself back up to his hooves, spying both his suit and his web shooters. He grabbed hold of the spider suit and slipped into it before he attached his web shooters, but when he turned around to face his foe once more horror filled up his eyes.
"Release her!" Spiderman demanded when he saw that the rock monster had grabbed Coco, who was laying motionless in the creatures grasp.
"You care so much for her?" the monster asked as it looked from the motionless pony to Spiderman, a smile spreading across is rocky face. "Then come and save her, hero." The monster leapt through the hole it had made in the ceiling, swinging out onto the roof. Spiderman roared with murder as he shot out a strand of webbing and took off after it, bursting out of the burning building and landing on the roof. He narrowed his eyes as he spied the monster atop another rood across from the boutique, smiling at Spiderman.
"Release her and I promise that your death will be painless," Spiderman said with murder in every syllable, but all his words caused the monster to do was smirk at him before he waved the mare back and forth slightly.
"Come now, it is the hero's job to save the damsel in distress from the big bad monster. So if you are a real hero, then you will have no efforts saving her," the monster said with a laugh before it began to take off across the building, Otto bellowing with fury as he began to swing after it.
"But if you aren't the hero that everypony says you are...then I promise that she'll be the next to die after you."