PREY OF THE QUEEN SPIDER
Chapter 4: "Ambush"
A Sailor Moon fanfic
By Bill K.
When Makoto opened her eyes, there was light on the far wall cast from the window behind her. The brown-haired woman found this unusual, as she'd never seen light cast onto that wall in the morning. Then she realized that it wasn't morning.
"How long did I sleep?" she mumbled to herself.
Wriggling out from under the covering, Makoto got up off her sleeping mat and crossed over to the table where her watch was. Picking it up, she squinted at it, still drowsy from sleep.
"It's almost five-thirty," she murmured. "I was only going to nap for a couple of hours! Last night must have taken more out of me than I thought."
Padding over to a closet, Makoto doffed the nightshirt and pulled on jeans and a long sleeve blouse. If she was going to go through the woods, she needed something that would protect her arms and legs from the underbrush.
Because she was going investigating. Maybe everyone else was willing to avoid the woods and shrug off the disappearance of any stranger who might stray into them. She wasn't programmed that way and hadn't been even before she realized her destiny as a Sailor Senshi. After finishing preparations, she headed out, but paused at the window and gazed out.
The south woods were to her left. From the temple, they seemed thick and dense, dense enough to keep civilization out for a thousand years or more. They also were thick and dense enough to hide things that civilization might no longer believe in. For a moment Makoto, who throughout her life had only rarely known fear, felt her chest tighten. The memory of last night, of the huge spider on top of her, pinning her down and poised to strike, sapped her will.
"Maybe I should call the others," the woman whispered to herself.
Her mouth turned to a scowl. Ami was in England, Rei was away at college, Minako was on her honeymoon and Usagi still had classes. Ami was out all together and was it fair to drag the others away for something she could probably handle alone? They still had summits to climb. She'd already reached her peak in life.
"Maybe I'll just nose around some," Makoto thought, heading for the door. "See what I can find out. If I hit something concrete, then I'll call in the troops."
As she closed the door behind her, Makoto grinned.
"Boy, if I drag Blondie away from her honeymoon, she's going to be pissed."
Looking around the temple, she found Kakusui gone. In a way that was good, as he might ask her questions she didn't want to answer. He might be absent-minded, but he wasn't stupid and she didn't want to give him any more clues to add up. On the other hand, his not being here made her curious and just a little troubled.
"He's probably in the middle of the water fall trying to freeze to death," Makoto thought to herself and grinned. Part of what made Kakusui charming was his oddball ways. Being around him was fun. It was why she kept coming back.
"If he'd just make a pass at you, he'd be perfect," Makoto joked and set out for the woods.
Once in the woods, when she was sure she couldn't be observed, Makoto changed into Sailor Jupiter. She wasn't so foolhardy that she would venture into strange territory in search of giant spider goblins in any other guise but her senshi guise. With the lightning rod on her tiara extended, Sailor Jupiter began hiking toward where she first encountered the spiders. All through the journey, Jupiter had to fight back feelings of paranoia. There seemed to be eyes on her every movement, but when she glanced back, she could see nothing.
"Natural, I guess," Jupiter mused as she continued on. "Strange woods, potentially dangerous mission, plus what happened last night. Give anybody the creeps. Just stay sharp and don't jump at shadows."
Not that she dismissed the prospect that something might just be following her. Jupiter wasn't stupid. There were hostiles crawling - - skittering?- - in these woods and they just might be waiting for their chance to jump her. Feeling paranoid didn't mean there wasn't something actually out to get you.
After a time it became too much for her. Sailor Jupiter stopped and turned around. She looked deep into the forest. Nothing. Her gaze shifted to above her, scanning the trees for some sign of something following her or something lying in wait. Still nothing. The forest seemed completely devoid of animal life except for her.
Completely - - devoid . . .
"There's no birds," Jupiter realized. "No squirrels, no animals of any kind. This forest is completely deserted!" Jupiter looked around suspiciously. "Does that mean something else is here now, something that they're afraid of? Do they know better than to come into this forest in the first place because of predators - - one predator in particular?"
Jupiter stood there, frowning. If they were going to attack, she wished they would do it already. She hated not knowing. Was there something there, or was she just being paranoid? The senshi stood indecisively, unsure whether to keep going or keep searching here. The longer she stood, the more irritated she got over her inability to see the right course.
"Go on," she finally told herself. "It's close to six. It'll be dark in about an hour or so. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to be in these woods after dark. It's practically night in here now, the trees are so thick. It might be pitch in here after dark."
And Jupiter continued on toward her goal, in the gloom and the eerie silence.
Finding Makoto gone, Kakusui's first assumption was that she had gone running. That assumption was quickly dispelled when he noticed her soiled jogging warm-ups folded neatly on a chair. Knowing the compulsively neat woman as he did, he knew she wouldn't have gone out jogging without washing her warm-ups first. A quick check of the temple didn't turn her up in the kitchen, the library or the training room. The monk frowned, puzzled.
A ten minute walk later found him at the clinic near the hotel. His thought was that Makoto was checking on the woman she'd found the previous evening. After a polite inquiry with the receptionist told him she wasn't there, Kakusui turned to leave.
"Kakusui-sensei," called out Dr. Masaoka, a genial, portly man nearly fifty. "What brings you here? You didn't fall asleep under the waterfall and give yourself hypothermia again, did you?"
"No, Masaoka-sensei," Kakusui replied, attempting to smile at the joke. "I was looking for someone. She is training with me at the temple. Do you remember the tall woman with brown hair from last night."
"Oh yes," nodded Masaoka. "Brought in the shock victim. My, she's a big one, isn't she? Big enough and sturdy enough to knock over a building. Quite a beauty, too, once you get past how tall she is." The doctor shook his head. "Afraid I haven't seen her. I can't imagine she'd be out and about, though. She was pretty exhausted last night. Hallucinating about giant spiders."
"She is and that's what concerns me. I'll continue my search elsewhere." Kakusui started to go, then turned back to the doctor. "How is the young woman Kino-san brought in?"
Masaoka's genial manner dimmed. "Passed away this morning, I'm afraid. At first I thought it was just shock, but I turned up a nerve toxin in her system while doing blood work. By the time I tried to give her an anti-toxin, it was too late."
"Poison?" Kakusui asked. "How could she have been poisoned?"
"Well, there were two puncture wounds on her shoulder," Masaoka reported. "The problem with that is the wounds are spaced too far apart to be any known poisonous animal. I thought about poisoned darts or pellets, but there's no evidence of a metallic injection." He sighed. "I sent the body to the coroner's office in Tokyo. They can do a better post-mortem investigation than I can here in the sticks. This is beyond me."
Kakusui nodded. Masaoka noted that the monk looked troubled as he headed for the door.
"Good luck in finding your missing student," Masaoka offered. "Perhaps last night gave her such a fright that she went home."
"Perhaps," Kakusui said as he exited. Outside he looked up at the sky colored in the indigo of dusk. Perhaps, but if he knew Kino-san, not likely.
Reaching the spot of the previous night's attack, Sailor Jupiter looked around. Nothing seemed to be there except her. Scowling, she scanned the ground.
"The webbing I cut off of that woman is gone," Jupiter thought as she knelt down near the ground. "I'm sure this is the spot she was on. Did it dissolve or something? Or did the spiders cover their tracks?"
Rising up to full height, Jupiter walked over to the spot near the trees where the spider goblin tackled her. What she found didn't please her.
"Nothing!" she thought. "I know I didn't imagine it! But I busted that spider into a million pieces! There should be spider guts all over the place! And yet it doesn't look like anything's been here in years."
Unwilling to admit defeat, Jupiter searched the area more thoroughly. There was little ground cover due to the density of the trees, so little could hide. But what little light there had been was rapidly fading, hampering her search. Lack of rain had made the soil hard, so there wasn't even evidence of spider tracks. Doubt began to creep into her mind. She was sure it had happened. But there was no evidence of it. Could anything, let alone creatures with limited intelligence, sweep a scene of every shred of evidence? It didn't seem possible, but if it wasn't possible it meant that she was hallucinating or worse.
"Come on," Jupiter scowled at herself. "You don't have the brains to be crazy. Boy I'm glad now that I didn't call the others in. Blondie would really be having a horselaugh on me."
Then she saw it. By the base of a tree, sticking to the side of a root, was a small patch of silk. The senshi knelt down and touched it. The silk was spider silk, but thicker and stickier than normal spider silk. With some effort Jupiter pulled her fingers away from it. It was just like the silk she'd burned away from the woman: spider silk strong enough to hold a human.
This was the proof. They did exist. And that meant last night really had happened. But that meant they'd swept the entire area of evidence of their existence. That meant they were intelligent - - or that something intelligent was controlling them. Noting the rapidly approaching darkness, Jupiter began to rise up. From the safety of the temple she'd call in the others. Together they'd clean this forest out before another poor unfortunate accidently fell victim to them.
When the weight fell on her, it felt like a dozen large bags of flour. The weight drove her to the ground, pinning her with a good five to six hundred pounds. But she knew it wasn't flour. If the coarse hairs brushing on the back of her thighs didn't tell her that, the hackles raising on the back of her neck did. Revulsion was quickly suppressed by fighting spirit.
"Supreme Thunder!" she roared out, her body electrifying. The attacking spider goblin was thrown away from atop her and Jupiter quickly scrambled to her feet.
Quickly scanning the situation told her what she faced. Three spiders bracketed her in a triangle formation. The first had pounced on her from above, while the other two quickly moved in to flank her. For a few moments the combatants stood their ground, sizing up each other and the situation. Jupiter kept one spider directly ahead of her, with the other two peripheral to her left and right sides. She wondered for a moment who would attack first. The spider on her left periphery moved first, lunging forward as if to attack.
"Sparkling Wide Pressure!" Jupiter shouted, pivoting and tossing a burst of electricity at the spider.
Instantly she realized the spider had just feinted as it easily avoided the electrical burst. Snapping back into position allowed her to realize that the other two were taking full advantage and attacking at once.
"Jupiter!" she snapped, hand at her side. "Oak Evolution!"
Electrical bursts fanned out in all directions, exploding at, on and around the trio of spider goblins. The bursts were so forceful that they all were forced to retreat from her. They still surrounded Jupiter, but from a wider triangle.
"This is no good," Jupiter thought, wiping sweat from her lower lip. "They can keep me at bay and wear me down until one of their attacks gets through. I'm going to have to take the battle to them."
Whirling on the spider to her left, Jupiter cried "Supreme Thunder" and a deadly bolt lanced out at it. The spider barely danced out of the way and rapidly gave ground. Jupiter was counting on this and turned back to the other two. Charging the one directly ahead of her, Jupiter cupped her hands. When she reached a certain distance, she acted.
"Sparkling Wide Pressure!" she yelled and fired off a burst of electricity.
The burst caught the spider on the abdomen as it was giving ground, sending the arachnid reeling. Immediately the spider on her right moved to cut Jupiter off. However, the senshi turned and fired off another electric burst at the closing spider. It struck the ground with the force of a grenade and the concussion knocked the spider off of its feet. It hit the ground and struggled to get up with great effort.
Whirling again to face the spider behind her, Jupiter found it closely pursuing her. Taken by surprise, the arachnid had no time to retreat.
"Supreme Thunder!" Jupiter roared. The bolt lanced out with deadly force. Too close to veer off, the spider was struck dead on and flash fried. It crumpled to the ground, blackened and dead.
Turning back to the others, Jupiter found they no longer had any stomach for the fight. Both spiders were rapidly heading into the inky forest. Instantly Jupiter began to pursue them.
"If I can find out where they go, I can find out what's controlling them!" Jupiter thought.
She pushed on, running at top speed so her two legs could keep up with their eight. Only their mass kept them from out-distancing her. She didn't fire at them, wanting to conserve her energy for later battle if necessary. As long as they kept running, she would keep pursuing them.
Running through a clump of trees, Jupiter was suddenly pulled off of her feet and into the air. It took a moment to realize what had happened. A large web had been strung between the trees. Rendered invisible by the darkness, the spiders had led her to it and she had blundered right into the trap. Jupiter tugged at the sticky strands holding her off the ground, but couldn't pull free. Moreover, the adhesive on the strands had glued her arms to her side and her thighs together, hampering her leverage.
"Dammit!" bellowed Jupiter in impotent fury, struggling without success to free herself. "Suckered me in! The whole thing was a sucker play!"
Vibrations on the web brought Jupiter's struggles to a stop. She looked up and saw another giant spider skittering down the web from out of the treetops. Her throat tightened and she felt her heart begin to hammer in her chest. For all its bulk, the spider was quick and advanced on her with alarming speed.
"Supreme Thunder!" Jupiter yelled out desperately.
The lightning flared without fail and the advancing spider drew back some. Her effort was two-fold: in addition to holding the spider at bay, she hoped to burn free of the web.
"Nothing!" gasped Jupiter. Then she realized why. The exertion of the battle and the pursuit had weakened her enough that her lightning wasn't potent enough. Given a chance to rest, she might burn free. But they weren't going to give her the chance to rest. Already the spider was advancing on her again and the other two were climbing onto the web from the other side. Jupiter sucked in air to call down another bolt.
And the spiders were on her. Each one began working on a different part of her, wrapping her body in sticky silk as strong as wire. The silk wrapping around her head choked off her power phrase into unintelligible mumbles. Desperately Jupiter fought, trying to rip free, but more and more silk began to cocoon her body. In a horrifying matter of minutes she was wrapped head to toe in the confining silk. The silk was porous, allowing air to get in - - but breathing was the last thought on her mind.
"T-They're going to eat me!" Jupiter's mind screamed out. Blind and helpless, her heart hammering in her throat, her skin crawling as she felt the alien touch of spider legs on her body weaving more sticky silk around her, Jupiter experienced for one of the few times in her life mortal terror. Her breath came out in shudders. Her body was alive with adrenaline. Nerves screamed to a brain that teetered on shutting down. Hopeless to believe it might work, her brain screamed out anyway, silently trying to summon the lightning down one last time. If she was destined to die, let it be by her hand and not theirs.
Then Jupiter felt a sense of movement. Suddenly the web no longer supported her. She was still tightly wrapped in the web cocoon, but now she felt like she was falling. Then the spider legs caught her. She was swung up and came to rest across something. It felt like something solid, but something made of tissue and cartilage and not rock. The only thing it could be was the spiders. They were moving.
They were carrying her off. But to where? And for what reason? Once more Jupiter strained to break free of the grip of the silk. All she could manage was to squirm a little.
Oh, why hadn't she brought the others?
From the corner of the sofa she was curled up in, Luna raised her head and looked over her shoulder. Usagi had been at her drawing table working on her homework assignment. Now, though, she was just staring off into space. This of course wasn't unusual for the easily distracted woman. It was the expression on Usagi's face that disturbed Luna.
"Usagi?" Luna ventured. "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know," Usagi whispered vacantly. Then she seemed to come back to Earth. "I got a chill all of a sudden. Like something bad just happened."
"Such as?" Luna asked. In the old days the cat would have dismissed such things as a teenager's overactive imagination. But Usagi's power and perception were growing as she came into adulthood and something like this suddenly took on more importance.
"I don't know," Usagi said softly. She put down her pencil and walked over to the phone. "I hope Mamo-chan's all right."
Continued in Chapter 5