Note: This has SPOILERS for Into the Spider-Verse. If you have not seen the film, you should probably hit the back button. RIGHT NOW. Thank you!

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse

A Tangled Web we Weave

Wilson Fisk sat at his desk in Fisk Tower, staring calmly at the woman sitting opposite him. "So," he asked calmly, "why didn't you tell me that people from other dimensions coming here would painfully glitch out then die?"

"Ah," Olivia Octavius said quietly as he frowned down at her. "How did you find out about that?" she asked.

"On the security footage when you were talking to the older Spider-Man in your lab," Wilson said impatiently.

Realizing he was getting annoyed Olivia tensed, knowing he could be over the desk with his hands on her throat in a moment. She quickly added, "Yes, I was aware. Part of why I wanted to study the alternate Spider Man was to try to deal with that. I was fairly confident we could align a subject's atoms to our dimension, given time."

Wilson sat back, apparently accepting that explaination. "I called you here to let you know that we will not be rebuilding the super collider," he told her.

"But..!" Olivia started.

Wilson held up a hand, "We will NOT be cancelling your research at Alchemax, and I will maintain your base funding. I think there is still potential in the research. But the Collider itself is too public right now."

Olivia had to concede that. "Thank you sir," she said meekly.

"Is there anything else?" Wilson asked tiredly.

"We should offer to pay to repair May Parker's home," Olivia suggested quietly. The widowed aunt of their Spider-Man's house had been caught up in a battle between Fisk's men and the group of alternate universe Spiders.

Wilson just LOOKED at her blankly.

"It will bolster your image as a good samaritan to the public," Olivia quickly pointed out, "AND it will make the City's case against you weaker with you going out of your way to help your supposed 'arch enemy's' Aunt." She shrugged, "It's a win win."

Wilson looked at her thoughtfully, then he nodded slightly. "I'll look into it," he said.

The meeting concluded, and Olivia fled knowing that she was lucky to have escaped the man with her life.

After she left Wilson Fisk sighed softly. He was free on bail, and he was confident that the charges filed against him wouldn't stick.

While having the Super Collider beneath his building was damming, as well as it being staffed by his Alchemax employees, Wilson had taken precautions. None of the money for construction or staff could be traced to him, just to shell companies. His being caught on site could be dismissed as his finding out about the illegal operations and trying to stop it. All quite respectable.

The only annoyance was a police officer observing him fighting Spider Man, but again... that could be written off as him attempting to stop an intruder. Really, Wilson expected there to be no long term effects from this failed operation.

"Mr Fisk," his secretary called over the intercom, "your appointment is here."

The older man entered, looking around warily. "Mr Fisk? I understand you were looking into funding certain kinds of research?" he asked.

"Mr Miles Warren, yes?" Wilson smiled, "I understand you're developing improved cloning technology..."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Olivia Octavius returned to her lab, collapsing tiredly into a comfy office chair. She had maintained a confident appearance in front of Mr Fisk, but she hurt all over. Battling multiple Spider-Men was bad enough, but she had been hit by a BUS! Thank goodness her 'Octopus' rig had automatic impact reducing subroutines, or she might have been a goner.

A replacement PC and new monitor had been delivered and set up while she had been away. One upside to her stuff getting stolen: she got a PC upgrade out of it. She opened up her browser and went to work downloading the various apps and widgets she liked on her desktop, even as she let the events of the past few days brew in the back of her mind.

Their Spider Man was twenty six or so.

(Poor bastard. He had just had the bad luck of running into the Goblin guarding the Collider. If that stupid Norman hadn't jumped him, who knows how things might have played out?)

The Spider-kid looked like he was also native to 'their' universe. The Spider Woman was also about the same age range. But the black clad Spider was older judging by his voice and manerisms, as was the 'other' Spider Man she had questioned in the lab. And the strange girl in the Spider Mech was clearly from a future era.

Olivia was arranging the downloaded apps she used, as she let the data compile in the back of her head. She frowned slightly as she checked if the computer clock matched up to her phone display, then froze as it hit her all of a sudden.

"TIME," Olivia hissed. TIME TRAVEL. She kept herself from saying that out loud, knowing the room was monitored by security camera.

There was clearly a temporal factor at work in the travelling across dimensions! With the right refinement, you could use their technology to travel through time!

Olivia KNEW she couldn't tell Mr Fisk about this yet. She was certain that if she did he'd immediately start pushing her to build a time machine, then send someone to the past to try to save his wife and son. At this point she only had limited practical evidence that the phenominon was even happening. Using the collider to access other times was only a theory for now.

Not to mention the whole issue of temporal paradoxes. Could you send someone back in time, change a pass event, and eliminate WHY you sent them back there in the first place? Mind you, if she COULD prove it one way or another they'd have to make a new science prize, just for her.

There was only one problem. "I need the collider data...," Olivia sighed.

The earlier data runs were all stored at Alchemax' labs. But the crucial one where their Spider-man had interacted with the collider and apparently summoned alternates were all in her old PC. Any other back ups had been destroyed with the collider itself.

Oivia sat back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling pensively.

There was no good reason for the Spider People to destroy her old PC, so hopefully the data was still there, intact. But retrieving it was the problem. Launching a raid against Spider Man's old base was vaguely feasable, but in any practical way was a bad idea. The first time, they had been lucky and caught the big guns off guard. If they tried it again, the Ultimates might come calling.

Well, there was one other way...

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"Well, that's a thing," Miles Morales noted as they watched construction crews employed by Fisk repair the home's outside damage.

"I'm still not terribly sure this is a good idea, but...," May Parker shrugged, the older woman standing beside the young boy.

"Hmm," Miles nodded. He certainly understood morally ambiguous situations, after finding out his uncle had been the Prowler. "You're going to have to sweep it for bugs after," he added wryly.

"Ha," May smiled wryly, "I was doing that before, too."

"Can I ask a personal question?" Miles asked hesitantly.

"Certainly. I won't promise to answer though," May noted.

"You seemed to know Doc Ock," Miles said hesitantly, "how did that happen?"

"Well, Doc was rampaging around the city, picked me up in a tentacle and somehow we hit it off," May said cheerfully.

Miles looked at her blankly, "What."

"Joking, joking," May smiled.

"Whew," Miles laughed. "So what...?"

"After Peter moved out, I put his things in storage and rented a room for students, usually," May explained. "Room and meals, etc etc for a extra charge. And Olivia ended up staying with me awhile." She smiled wryly, "She's really a living 'absent minded scientist' so I had to take care of her more than usual. So we got to be friends."

"Ah," Miles nodded.

After Miles left May relaxed, sitting on a nearby park bench as she watched them work. Then she blinked as she saw a familiar figure walking up to her. "Speak of the devil...," she muttered.

"Devil? Really?" Olivia pouted as she sat down by May on the bench.

"You've looked better," May noted, hiding her concern behind mild snark. She looked like she had been beaten.

"I got hit by a bus. So sue me," Olivia said dryly. She paused, then sighed. "I'm truly sorry about the attack on your house," she said quietly, "I didn't even know we were coming here until the last minute. If I had known, I would have... done SOMETHING."

May looked over at Olivia in surprise, seeing the truly pained look on the other woman's face. "Thanks, Liv," she said, patting her arm.

"Admittedly, that comes out kind of hollow considering my joining in on the attack, but...," Olivia shrugged, but still felt touched May had called her Liv.

"Considering what happened to Prowler after he crossed Fisk, I'm not sure you had that much choice," May noted.

Liv made a pained face, but nodded slightly. "Now I'm going to totally undermine all that by asking a favour," she said abruptly.

May looked amused, "Oh?"

"Can I get my computer back, please?" Liv asked, clutching her hands in front of her and batting her eyes.

May had to bite back a laugh. "Will you promise you won't use it to break space-time again?" she asked dryly.

"I promise," Liv held up her hand with a serious look on her face.

May wasn't entirely sure of her sincerity, but the computer was Alchemax property. She, in theory, could try to send the cops after her. "I'll FEDEX it to you under another name," May decided. "Have someone at your office ready to sign for it..."

"Thank you!" Liv impulsively hugged her.

To be continued...?

Notes: The movie doesn't address Olivia not telling Wilson about the glitching problem. My thought was she was confident she could fix it... Yes, that's Miles Warren aka The Jackal, a long time Spider Man villain who used clones. I am assuming the movie is set in the wider 'Ultimate Universe' with their Avengers-like group called the Ultimates.

My basic assumption is that Olivia has NOT been all that active as Doc Ock yet. She's basically a well known physicist who's considered okay to lecture high school students. So either she hasn't done the villain stuff much yet, or she's been very successful in keeping her ID secret. In the comics the first Doc Ock built the arm rig to operate multiple devices at once, so I could see Olivia doing the same...