ARACHNE
A WORM/Spiderverse story
by Tangent
"WHOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Webswinging was thrilling, exhilarating, moderately terrifying, and the most fun Taylor... (Arachne!) had had in years!
Oh sure, there were a few false starts (as evidenced by the full body impact dent in one billboard), and one of her webfluid cartridges had run dry right at the terminal apex of one of her swings (fortunately, her other webshooter still had enough of a charge to allow her to redirect herself to a nearby wall so she could swap cartridges), but she thought her first patrol was going rather well.
She had even stopped a few muggings she had spotted via her new allies!
An ability she was totally never going to tell anyone about. Ever. Not even after she eventually revealed that she could control spiders. Not that she didn't like that aspect of her power set, but perceiving everything through the senses of literally millions of spiders in a blocks wide radius all around her was just the sort of ace-in-the-hole ability you just didn't give away for no good reason. Especially since she was still figuring out how to interpret it all. Heck, she was even going to put off letting anyone know that she could control her tiny minions as long as possible, given that her other abilities were more than suitable enough for direct superhero work. A nice utility power to have on the side, but covering people in spiders, even if they were the bad guys, would probably wreck the heroic rep she was trying to build for herself.
One of those "muggings" had turned out to be an impromptu semi-public make-out session that Arachne had almost interrupted before she had realized that both parties were very obviously consenting adults.
Very consenting adults.
Very...
Good God, people! It was the middle of fucking God damned January in New England! Take it inside, dammit!
They were still going at it by the time Arachne left her perception range for those particular spidery witnesses.
Oh, her poor poor innocent spider friends…
"Junk, junk, garbage, crapola… Oh, come on! I know this stupid shop has to keep their decent stuff somewhere!" Black Arachnia (Oh yeah! Black Arachnia ~ Spiders in Disguise!) grumbled to herself as she rooted through the stock of the airsoft gun shop. Invisibly, of course, because fuck security cameras. "Ah, here we go! Tools, cartridges, and compressors! Now let's see what would go best with what I got... Why, hello there Mr. floor safe! Didn't see you there! Okay, let's do this!"
Bracing one hand on the floor next to the safe, she pressed her other hand on the door of the safe, concentrated on the sticky-sticky thing, and pulled...
After a moment's strain, the whole thing ripped right out of the floor!
"Okay, time to book! There's no way that didn't set off any alarms. I'll just grab... Dammit!" Super strength or not, there was no way she'd be able to run off with both the safe and what she had originally broke in to this particular shop to steal! Especially since she hadn't even set any of it aside before getting distracted by the nice shiny floor safe!
Screw it, there had to be other paintball shops in town. The safe was probably loaded with cash, so that's what she was going to take.
"Yoink! Woo woo woo woo woo!"
Heh... And Brian thought the old timey shows that dad liked to watch were boring!
"There's no need to fear, Spider-Guy is here!" Greg declared in his best superhero voice as he jumped in and pulled the rapist off of the victim.
And then proceeded to dodge wildly as said half-naked victim tried to attack him for some reason! "Let him go you jerk! We were just making out!"
Greg dropped the guy abruptly. "Whups, sorry, my bad! Didn't mean to be a clockblocker! I mean cockblocker, dude! Uh... still, outside in a dark alley? In the middle of January?"
"WILL YOU GO THE FUCK AWAY AND LEAVE US ALONE ALREADY!?"
"I have to go," Armsmaster told Webb. "Apparently somebody broke into an airsoft store and ripped the safe out of the floor. They want me to look at the scene along with Brock and Osborn."
"I understand. I'll just head back to my quarters since I can't do anything else here tonight. See you later."
February couldn't come soon enough for Parker...
"You guys do realize that..."
Arachne's opening dialogue was interrupted by a wild spray of gunfire that she had somehow managed to completely dodge.
Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Aaaaaaand thwip!
"Holy fuck! Twitchy much?" Arachne complained after disarming everyone with some spur of the moment webshooting. She then quickly moved to step into the group, seizing the items they had been exchanging and webbing them to the alley wall for the police to recover later as evidence.
"CAPE!"
"Wow. You must be the smart one. Or the dumb one. I'm just going to call you Captain Obvious now."
One of the thugs now behind her tried to stab her with a knife.
The key word being tried.
"Yeah, don't do that," Arachne commented as she adroitly turned to catch the blade in her fingers, stopping the thrust so suddenly that the guy looked like he sprained his wrist. "It never turns out well."
Without looking, she webbed up the other guys behind her as they tried to run away.
"Now you look like a guy who owns a cellphone... yep, here it is!" And just web up the last guy and dial 911...
"Yeah, Arachne here again. I just webbed up a drug deal in progress in the back alley between... Hold on, let me check the street signs..."
All in all, it was a good first night.
Later, when she had time to think about it, Arachne experienced a bad case of the shakes before pushing the belated terror out of her and continuing on as if she had always known she was fast enough to dodge bullets. As opposed to finding out in the middle of her first group bust.
"I really need to figure out what I can do…"
"GODDAMMIT!" Black Arachnia threw the empty safe as hard as she could, huffing angrily as she watched it arc high into the air. "Who the fuck has a floor safe in their shop and doesn't put a damn thing in it!?"
A moment later, the safe came crashing down on top of a car the next block over, setting off it's car alarm.
"Screw it. The impact webbing probably dissolved by now. I'm going back to work on my gun..."