"You want to fight me? Is that your idea, or is it theirs?" Peter showed no sign of panic at the tentacles' movement. This Doctor Octopus was an easy target. If provoked, Peter could use a small amount of his Temporal Power to perform a Quantum Shift, bypassing the tentacles entirely and knocking him out with one punch! However, Temporal Power was non-renewable for him, and he preferred to conserve it until he found a new source. Even if a single Quantum Shift only cost less than 0.1% of his power, it was still an unnecessary expenditure.
"Hmph—" Doctor Octopus forced himself to calm down, shouting: "Quiet! Both of you, quiet down! We cannot defeat him! Quiet!" The last word was clearly directed at the supposed AI in the mechanical tentacles.
This struck Peter as odd. The AI was only supposed to corrupt his mind, making him more aggressive. Why could they seemingly communicate? If so, the AI's sophistication might rival Iron Man's J.A.R.V.I.S.! But that was impossible. They were from different eras, and Octavius was a nuclear physicist, not an AI designer.
Excluding those impossible options, the truth had to be... The guy was suffering from Hysteria/Dissociative Disorder?
Peter realized that the electrical shock had damaged the chip that suppressed the tentacles' influence on his brain. Combined with the trauma of professional failure and the loss of his wife, the intense external stimuli caused him to hallucinate the tentacles' consciousness and communicate with them. The tentacles had never been designed with vocal components; they couldn't talk! Doctor Octopus should communicate with them via the neural link, not out loud. He was merely talking to himself or attempting self-persuasion!
Doctor Octopus was a schizophrenic!
Peter frowned deeply. He had initially hoped to recruit this Doctor Octopus, who seemed more redeemable than the female counterpart. He thought all he needed to do was restrain him and build a new inhibiting chip. But it seemed the core problem wasn't just the chip; the chip was merely a catalyst.
Employing a brilliant but mentally unstable mad scientist...
Peter (Earth-616) felt resistant to the idea. I guess I'll have to wait until No Way Home to deal with him. He decided to hold off, hoping to fix his mind later.
"Alright, we don't want to fight you," Doctor Octopus stepped back slightly, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender and retracting his tentacles. "But since you don't know the solution, why tell me the flaw?"
Peter frowned: "I told you it would fail. Are you seriously going to restart the experiment?"
Doctor Octopus laughed heartily: "So what if it fails? What experiment succeeds on the first try? The world's greatest inventions come from learning from failure! Since I am on this path to greatness, I am prepared for failure!"
"You are certainly a qualified scientist," Peter shook his head slightly. "But you are not a decent human being."
"Hmph!" Doctor Octopus was clearly offended by Peter's assessment but dared not attack due to Peter's proven strength.
"I recall someone telling a younger peer: 'Intelligence is a gift, not a privilege,'" Peter said slowly. "Yet now, you are attempting to use your intellect to build a machine that could destroy the entire city, disregarding human lives! Do you view your intelligence as a gift or a privilege?"
Doctor Octopus froze. He had told the exact same thing to Peter Parker recently.
"You know Peter?" Doctor Octopus asked, stunned.
"I do," Peter shrugged.
SMACK! Just then, Tobey-Spidey dropped from the ceiling, landing beside Peter, his voice anxious: "Dr. Otto, where did you take Mary Jane?"
Peter looked at Tobey-Spidey: "You didn't find Mary Jane?" Tobey-Spidey shook his head, his eyes glued to Doctor Octopus.
Doctor Octopus was not surprised by Tobey-Spidey's arrival: "I already gave her to..." He quickly thought better of revealing the truth. If Spider-Man knew the hostage was safe, he would stay and stop the experiment.
"What did you do to her!?" Tobey-Spidey demanded, frantic. "If you leave here now, I will return her to you unharmed after my experiment is complete. Otherwise..." Doctor Octopus smiled wickedly.
"No, that's not you, Otto!" Tobey-Spidey stared at Doctor Octopus, feeling a profound sense of alienation.
"This is me!" Doctor Octopus roared. "Now, get out! Or I will kill her!"
"Damn it!" Tobey-Spidey was torn. The woman he loved versus the entire city—a terrible choice.
Peter sighed: "Since it has come to this, I suppose I have no choice but to..."
WUM— His Spider-Sense screamed!