Dr. Otto Octavius awoke slowly, his eyes adjusting to a ceiling that shimmered like onyx laced with stardust. Gold veins glowed faintly along obsidian walls, casting ambient warmth across an impossibly lavish laboratory that looked nothing like his old fusion workspace. The scent of chamomile tea drifted through the room as soft slippers padded toward him.
"Sir, you're awake!" Gwen's voice was light, musical, impossibly kind.
He blinked again. Before him stood Gwen, Rogue, and Kara—each holding porcelain teacups, their expressions full of earnest relief.
"I... I don't understand," he stammered. "Where am I?"
"You were abandoned in that the garbage bag sir everyone refused to help you out of it." Gwen said solemnly, lowering her head. "In America."
"Left behind by a cruel world," Rogue added, her face a mask of gentle concern.
"We could not abandon you, sir," Kara said, stepping forward and offering him a silver tray with biscuits stacked in delicate spirals. "So we brought you somewhere safe. Somewhere... better."
Dr. Octavius sat up slowly, touching the silk robes that had replaced his lab coat. "This can't be right. The equipment—this lab—it's... it's flawless."
The girls exchanged soft glances.
"There's something we didn't tell you," Rogue confessed, eyes wide with gentle apology. "We're not from the United States."
"We're from another country," Gwen said carefully, "that the world laughs at. They say we're evil. That we're unworthy. That we're dangerous."
Kara's voice was barely a whisper. "But all we want is peace. Progress and fusion technology to light up every home—clean, safe, and free from tyranny."
Octavius stared, heart beginning to stir at the raw vulnerability he saw in their eyes. "But you're… you're bright. Intelligent. Compassionate young women. How could the world look down on you?"
Rogue tilted her head with a fragile smile. "It's easier to call something evil than to understand it."
Kara took a breath and stepped closer, hand to her chest, voice quiet but intense. "There is something you can do, Doctor. Something no one else can. Something that might just save the world."
He sat straighter, uncertain but intrigued.
"We offer you unlimited resources. Full creative freedom. Assistants. Labs. Funding beyond your wildest dreams. Help us bring fusion power to the world."
"And the best part?" Gwen leaned forward. "No government oversight. No red tape. Just science. Just you."
Kara paused, glancing toward the reactor room beyond the transparent wall. "All discreetly… controlled by the Empire of London," she muttered under her breath.
Otto blinked. "What?"
"Oh, nothing." She smiled brightly. "Just a silly little phrase."
Silence stretched for a moment. Then Octavius stood, eyes suddenly glossy.
"You... believe in my work."
"We do," Rogue said softly. "We believe in you."
He exhaled slowly, touched his heart, and nodded. "Then I'll help you."
Cheers rang out as Gwen clapped and Rogue grinned. Kara turned to the sealed door behind them, gesturing with one hand. It hissed open with hydraulic precision, revealing the gleaming core of his fusion reactor—fully intact, nestled in a glass chamber as if it had always belonged there.
He didn't question how it had arrived.
They led him deeper into his new laboratory complex—a golden hall of madness and beauty, where every console gleamed with liquid crystal, and robotic arms moved like dancers across the domed ceiling. Juggernauts in obsidian lab armor stood guard, plasma scalpels holstered beside notebooks and diagnostic tablets.
"Your job," Rogue told him, "is to build the future."
"Our job," Gwen added, "is to protect it."
Dr. Octavius placed a reverent hand on the reactor chamber. "Let's begin."
Outside the lab, the three girls walked through the corridor lined with fire-lit sconces and glittering walls.
"We didn't just kidnap him," Kara said, pulling out a lollipop and unwrapping it lazily. "We made him want to stay."
"Green Tea Bitch Squad," Gwen said, voice steady with pride, "mission complete."
Rogue, her arms crossed, nodded. "We weaponized innocence. Again."
They didn't speak after that. They didn't need to. The hush of boots on marble echoed as they walked in unison toward the central tower of Kara's empire, where their next mission would no doubt begin.
And in the chamber far behind them, beneath the swirling lights of controlled fusion and dreamlike ambition, a man who once sought to change the world now labored to build the power that would help rule it.
And as the reactor core glowed quietly beneath Octavius' fingers, the Empire of London had already begun using it to power its next great conquest.
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