Laurel Otani
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Laurel Otani was youthful zoologist in her late thirties who was hired from a biotech company in Tokyo to work for Denham Products in New York. She debuted the 2005 novel Kong Reborn by Russell Blackford.
History
Kong Reborn
At Denham Products, Laurel worked mainly with the animals kept on the replica zoos and farms on the lower floors of the facility. In January of 2004 she was summoned by CEO Jack Denham to a secret meeting with Graham Riley and Mark Illingworth at Denham's apartment. There, they were approached with the idea of cloning King Kong in order to compete with rival Charlton Hemming and his company Bionimals, which they suspected were also trying to clone the beast. Denham had a blood sample, but needed tests run to determine if it was legitimate.
After it is determined that the gorilla Matthilde would be unable to carry the gargantuan fetus to term, Laurel and her team are sent to build an artificial womb to house it, which they dubbed the "placental tank". Laurel and Graham Riley ran tests on the tank gestating mice and kittens, but they were often unsuccessful. However, with Matthilde unable to carry the fetus any further, Laurel and the rest of the team had to perform a cesarean section and moved it into the tank, where it grew for the next five months before they agreed to take him out. Laurel then began to take on a role as Kong's "mother", and cared for him as he outgrew his cage and was moved to a specially built facility on the roof, where she fed him milk from a 2 pint bottle, and gave him his first solid foods wearing a shabby gorilla costume. Laurel continued to care for Kong with the rest of the team, until in March of 2008 he went wild.
He began throwing a tantrum after tearing a branch off of a mango tree, and Laurel theorized that he had simply enjoyed the feeling, and coupled it with early-onset puberty due to his lack of contact with a proper mother, like a normal gorilla would have had, and his understanding his unnatural existence and yearning for his natural habitat. The team then suggested they move Kong to Skull Island.
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