Alexandra

When they reached Ned's apartment, Alexandra and Peter said hello to Mrs. Leeds and she offered them snacks. She was always offering them some sort of food to eat, which was always without fail delicious.

They followed Ned back to his bedroom, which was extremely messy. Alexandra wasn't sure what she had been expecting, he was a teenage boy, after all. Ned had several computer monitors set up at his desk and two keyboards. Ned sat down in front of the computers and spun around in his chair to face his friends.

"You are such a computer nerd," Alexandra said, looking at Ned.

"I'm his guy in the chair!" Ned exclaimed in protest. "I've gotta have three monitors in case Peter needs me to pull up multiple things while he's out in the field. Though, he doesn't usually ask me to do stuff... What exactly do you need help with?" He turned to Peter who, up until this point, had been watching his friends bicker with amusement.

"Oh, right." Peter walked over and bent over so he could look at Ned's computer monitors. "I need you to look up Dr. Otto Octavius."

"That's a weird name." Ned chuckled a bit as he typed the name into the search bar. "And also weird that you couldn't do it yourself. You know how to use the Internet, don't you?"

"You wanna be my guy in the chair or not?" Peter asked.

"All right, all right." Ned laughed.

A plethora of links appeared. Ned clicked on the first one, which happened to be a Wikipedia article. "Whoa, he's a nuclear physicist, atomic research consultant, inventor, and lecturer." He looked back at Peter. "What's so special about him? Other than the obvious genius aspect."

"Are there any recent news articles on him?" Peter asked.

Ned checked, and there were. "Oh, here we go." He clicked on one titled, Dr. Otto Octavius Experiment Gone Wrong. "Looks like he was trying to invent... wait a second—holy crap... is this that guy who tried to rob the bank the other night? The one with the mechanical arms?"

Peter nodded in response and Alexandra's eyes widened. "He's the guy you were fighting?" She asked. "As in, the guy with the giant metal arms who was throwing cars around and almost killed you?"

"He didn't—I was fine!" Peter said. "I have to find him and stop him before he seriously hurts somebody. I don't think he's actually himself right now, those arms are doing something to him; controlling him or—I dunno—something."

"That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?" Alexandra asked, standing up straight and folding her arms across her chest. "How could the arms...?" Her eyes widened in realization. "He... designed those things with artificial intelligence?"

"Yep," Peter replied, popping the p.

"Jesus Christ... you didn't do that, right?"

"Well, no, I mean—'cause technically Mr. Stark designed my suit," Peter said. "It uh, does have an A.I. installed though. Her name is Karen."

Both Ned and Alexandra paused, glancing away from the computer screen and up at Peter with equally confused looks on their faces. Peter stared straight ahead, pretending he didn't see their stares. In his defense, it was a good name! Especially for an artificial intelligence program—Spongebob references aside.

"Ooooooookay..." Ned trailed off.

"Mr. Stark designed your new suit, but didn't you design your first one?" Alexandra asked.

Peter nodded. "Yeah, I made my own web shooters and everything!" He sounded quite proud. He grabbed his backpack and dug around inside before pulling out two small, identical contraptions that Alexandra had never seen before. "I kept them! Just in case of an emergency."

Alexandra took one web shooter from Peter and examined it delicately. She traced her fingers along the top and then looked at Peter. "How does it work?" She asked.

"Ah." Peter held up the other web shooter and pointed to a small button on the top. "You just hit this button and it shoots webs. Pretty simple, actually. Mr. Stark's is a lot more impressive than mine..." He blushed a bit.

"Dude, are you kidding? These are freaking awesome!" Ned exclaimed. "I remember when I got to use one on that guy—what was his name? He was all sparky—oh! Shocker!" He grinned.

"That was pretty cool," Peter admitted.

Alexandra applied a bit too much pressure to the small button and accidentally released the sticky webs from the capsules inside the old web shooters. She jumped a bit as the web attached itself to Ned's wall. "Oops."

Ned stared at it a moment. "Awesome! I'm never cleaning my wall!"

"What if your mom asks?" Peter asked, taking the web shooter from Alexandra gingerly. She didn't object. Those things were weird.

He set them down on Ned's desk.

"True... anyway, what do you want me to do, Peter?" Ned asked eagerly, turning his attention back to the the computer monitors.

"Right! Can you... like track Octavius somehow? Like track his mechanical arms or something?" Peter asked. Ned was a lot better with computers than he was, and he had no idea how to do any of that sort of stuff on his own. Ned had taught him a few tricks, but his skills were no where near the level that Ned was on. The guy had been learning about computers since he was a toddler. 

Ned thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on his desk in thought. "Maybe...?" He replied, a bit hesitantly. "I'm not sure, I would need to hack his system, and I don't know if that's even possible."

"He'll appear on the news soon enough, probably," Alexandra spoke up. "Maybe Peter could plant a tracking device or—I dunno—some other nerdy computer system—well, you get what I mean." 

"That's... actually a really good idea." Ned dug through his desk drawers and pulled out one of many flash drives. He plugged it into his computer and then began running a program and downloading it onto the drive.

"I know." Alexandra shrugged with a grin, despite the fact she hadn't sounded so sure of herself before.

When Ned finished the program, he removed the flash drive and held it up. "This," He said, holding it out to Peter, "will let me track his location, assuming you can plug it into his system."

Peter took the drive from his friend and smiled. "Thanks, Ned," He said. "Now all we have to do is wait for him to attack again."

Alexandra found herself sitting on the edge of Ned's bed while the boys chattered away and stared at the computer monitors. Waiting for this dangerous man to attack again didn't seem like a great idea, but there wasn't really any other way for them to get this done. "Can't you call Tony Stark or something?" She finally asked.

Peter looked over at her. "W-what?" His voice cracked a bit. "No, I can't call Mr. Stark! He's super busy right now... I don't wanna bother him. Besides, I can't call him every time there's a disturbance. I've gotta be able to handle these problems by myself."

"But, Peter, this could be dangerous. This could be really, really dangerous," Alexandra protested. She still wasn't sure how she felt about her best friend swinging around the city fighting guys with giant metal arms that apparently had minds of their own! "What if you get hurt?"

"I'll be fine." Peter waved her concern off. "I can handle myself. Right, Ned?"

Ned nodded in response. "Yeah, I mean, he went up against Liz's dad, while preventing that jet from crashing into any populated areas!" He said. "Peter knows what he's doing. Plus he's got that suit that was made for him by Tony freaking Stark! Y'know, Iron Man?"

"Yes, Ned, I know who Tony Stark is," Alexandra sighed. "I just... I don't know. What if something goes wrong?"

"Alex," Peter sighed, walking over to her. He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked at her. "Nothing is going to happen to me, nothing I can't handle anyway. I promise."

His big brown eyes were filled with determination, and Alexandra couldn't help but sigh. "There's no talking you out of this, is there?" She asked. Peter shrugged sheepishly. "All right, fine... so how exactly do you plan to get that program into Dr. Octavius's system?"

"Doc Ock."

Both Peter and Alexandra glanced in Ned's direction, expressing looks of shared confusion. Ned looked over when he felt their stares and chuckled a bit. "Sorry, what?" Peter asked him.

"Doc Ock, that's what we should call him!" Ned replied. "Liz's dad had a cool nickname; the Vulture. So why not this guy?"

"Oh my God," Alexandra muttered under her breath. Of course Ned would be the one to think that it was important to give the bad guys code names.

"And superheroes get superhero names, why can't super villains get super villain names?" Ned added.

Peter seemed to consider this for a moment before shrugging. "Yeah, okay. Doc Ock; I like it."

"You two are completely ridiculous." Alexandra shook her head.

Ned rolled his chair over to her, grinning and nudging her in the side. "Aw, c'mon, you can't tell me you don't think that name is totally badass," He said. He nudged her again. "Yeah? Yeah?"

Alexandra laughed a little and conceded. "All right, fine," she said. "I guess it is pretty badass."

Ned threw a fist into the air in triumph. "Yes!" He cheered. His mom suddenly called from down the hall for them to keep it down and Ned winced a bit. "Sorry, Mom!"