Federal Reserve Heist

Once upon a time, not long after his terrible accident, Doctor Octopus decided it was time for his very first crime.

He thought carefully about where to go, the way he thought about everything — slowly, precisely, like a scientist solving a puzzle. And he chose a very big target indeed: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a tall stone building on a street called Liberty Street, home to one of the largest gold vaults on the entire planet.

Otto Octavius marched right down Liberty Street in the middle of the day, his four mechanical arms curling and uncurling behind him, clearing a path through the startled crowd. People gasped. People pointed. Nobody had ever seen anything quite like him before.

"Open the vault," he told the guards inside, his voice calm and cold, "or my assistants will open it for you."

The guards froze in place, too frightened to move. That vault door had been built to survive explosions and drills and every trick a thief had ever dreamed up. But it had never been built to survive four arms strong enough to bend steel beams like they were made of clay.

Doctor Octopus wedged two of his claws into the seam of the great door and began, slowly and terribly, to pry it open.

And that was exactly when a red-and-blue blur dropped down from a lamppost high above.

"Sorry, Doc," said a cheerful voice, "but I don't think gold's really your color."

It was Spider-Man.

Doctor Octopus barely had time to turn his head before one of his four arms lashed out, fast as a striking snake, and Spider-Man had to flip backward across the marble steps just to dodge it.

The fight that followed taught all of New York City something brand new about danger. Doc Ock's arms struck from four directions all at once, smashing straight through a stone column and sending chunks of Liberty Street sailing through the air. Spider-Man ducked and dodged and swung from lampposts, studying his opponent with sharp, careful eyes the entire time. He wasn't just fighting. He was thinking.

And then, in the middle of all that chaos, Spider-Man noticed something important. Every single one of Doctor Octopus's four powerful arms connected back to one single spot — a small coupling right at the base of Otto's spine, where the harness had fused into his nervous system all those months ago.

If that one connection could be jammed, maybe — just maybe — all four arms would stop at once.

Spider-Man aimed as carefully as he had ever aimed anything in his life. He fired a thick stream of sticky web fluid straight into that coupling.

It worked instantly. The signal jammed. All four of Doctor Octopus's arms locked stiff, frozen mid-swing, like a puppet whose strings had suddenly been cut. Doctor Octopus toppled backward onto the marble steps, sputtering with a fury unlike anything he had ever felt before.

Police sirens wailed down Liberty Street as officers rushed in and hauled Doctor Octopus away, his four arms still frozen at his sides, the great vault door still shut safely behind him. He had not won. He had not even come close.

By the very next morning, a newspaper called the Daily Bugle had printed his photograph right on the front page, calling him New York City's newest menace. Otto Octavius, once a respected scientist with two doctorates and a mother who believed in him completely, was now something else entirely — a name people whispered nervously on street corners.

But as officers led him into the police van, something surprising happened. Otto Octavius allowed himself one small, cold smile.

Because in all his life, he had rarely met anyone quite like the masked stranger who had just beaten him. Someone fast enough to dodge four striking arms. Someone clever enough to find the one weakness Otto himself, brilliant as he was, hadn't planned for.

Most people who crossed Doctor Octopus simply ran away as fast as their legs could carry them. This one had studied him instead, calmly and carefully, the way a scientist studies a difficult problem.

And somewhere beneath all that fury, in the quiet, thinking part of his mind — the same part that had once earned two doctorates by solving problems nobody else could solve — Otto Octavius was already turning the fight over and over, already wondering, already planning.

Because he had a strong feeling that this would not be the last time he and this Spider-Man crossed paths.

He was right.