ARACHNE
A WORM/Spiderverse story
by Tangent

Sunday was a pretty quiet day for Taylor, which she spent recharging her webfluid cartridges, crafting several new ones, and charging those as well. And then getting online on her (her very own!) new laptop that she herself had selected the previous day and looking up ways that she might be able to do to make producing her Tinkertech ideas easier (or at least cheaper) for herself.

All the while taking advantage of the fact that she was home all day to have her little buddies continue their work on her main costume in the basement, with her spent allies reassigned to either hunting as groups to bring back useful nutrients for her weaving crew, or inspection teams going over the work already done to make sure that there were no flaws. The net result was a house that was rapidly becoming distressingly short of potential prey for her friends, but on the plus side, her main costume was all but done except for the dye job. Including the additional thin underlayers she had thought of yesterday morning. With their job finished, it was time to let her colony of little helpers go and spread out back into the neighborhood as best they could so that they didn't starve in the now currently pest free home (Seriously, she was so proud of the little guys! They had even eliminated all the mice!).

At the moment, all that remained of her production colony were a few stragglers who had chosen to stay and tough out the barren hunting conditions until the pests returned (so loyal!), and some egg sacks that would hatch once the weather warmed up again.

Ooh... This looked promising!

Oscorp was considered to be one of the industry leaders in reverse engineering Tinkertech! While they might not have nearly as high a success rate at doing so as Dragon (Really, who did?), they performed remarkably well with low end Tinker technology, and were apparently known to be accommodating with independent Tinkers. If she offered up some of her safer formulas and designs for them to patent, test, and market, she'd have access to industry grade labs and supplies! And she wouldn't have to put up with the restrictions of the Wards program the Protectorate ran (okay, their authorized Tinker budgets may be bigger on average than the industry standard, but she'd be nowhere near as effective as she was during her first patrol if she had to follow the Wards regulations that she knew of since looking them up). Honestly, she didn't need a lot, and most of what she could produce could be done cheaply with the right resources, so hooking up with a company like Oscorp seemed to be the way to go forward at this point.

Best of all, they had a headquarters right in Brockton Bay, unlike their closest comparable competitor, Stark Industries, whose closest headquarters was located in Boston.

"THAT FUCKING BITCH TOOK MY NAME!" Aisha screamed as she took the Sunday printing of the Brockton Bay Bugle from Lisa's hands and stared at the picture of Arachne in action.

"I was still reading that," Lisa commented, taking a sip of her coffee. "And she didn't take your name."

"The fuck she didn't! I was active first!"

"To be fair, Aisha..." Brian started in the amused tone of an older brother watching his little sister rage over something he himself considered to be inconsequential.

"FUCK FAIR!"

"To be fair," Brian continued more firmly, "Arachne is not the same as Arachnia. And she got her name out there first."

"No she didn't! Black Arachnia has been my PHO account name for years! So I had my name out there first!"

"Her's is a mythological reference, while yours is a Transformer," Lisa pointed out with a slight smirk as she waited for her paper to be returned.

"Mine is the most awesome Transformer ever! Get it right!"

"You could always mess with her by dressing up in an evil twin version of her costume," Regent pointed out, happy to add fuel to the proverbial fire.

"Now we're talking!" Aisha cheered up, finally setting the paper back down. "Now what to make it out of..."

"I'll call the boss," Lisa offered as she took her paper back. "This sounds like something he'd like to get behind, and he'd definitely be able to commission a costume for you."

"You do that. I got an idea for a different type of web gun I want to work on now. Bitch wants to swing like Tarzan? I'll show her who the real swinger is!"

Spider-Guy was out and about putting in some daylight facetime doing the hero thing. Dressed a little warmer this time to be sure, but he still had the hoodie on over his winter jacket to show the flag (as it were).

Apparently another spider themed hero, Arachne, had also made her debut Friday night. And she'd even managed to stop more crime than he had while she was at it. Which, he supposed was okay, as being a hero wasn't a competition. Or at least it wasn't supposed to be according to most of the verified heroes that had posted on PHO. Crime stopped was crime stopped, regardless of who saved the day, right?

"Excuse me, young man, but do you happen to know where a restaurant by the name of Marcell's is? I'm sure I followed my Daughter-in-Law's directions, but I can't seem to find it anywhere."

"Oh, sure," Spider-Guy replied. "You're almost there, ma'am. It's half a block down, right across the street. Here, allow me to escort you..."

Eh, he was sure that he'd find crime to thwart eventually…

Parker doubled down on preparations, getting as much time in his assigned Tinker lab as he could get away with.

He wasn't jealous of Arachne and Spider-Guy already being active heroes while he was stuck in M/S observation really (technically, it wouldn't be jealousy anyway - it would be envy). No, he wasn't jealous. Annoyed, perhaps, but hardly jealous. It was good that the two were doing the hero thing.

Ghost Spider, on the other hand, was going to be a problem. One he was sure he could help solve, since he essentially had nothing but time while Armsmaster had to actually do the leader thing as well as go on patrols and take mandatory breaks (because, seriously, the man was a noted workaholic who had to be ordered to get enough rest). According to the Thinkers, Ghost Spider seemed to have the same basic powers Arachnia, Spider-Guy, and he himself did, barring the webs Arachne used (which were probably Tinkertech) and Ghost Spider's cloaking (which might be Tinkertech).

It wasn't a perfect cloak, as apparently moving too fast caused visible distortions even in low quality security footage, so Parker felt that he could come up with something that could be installed in his and Armsmaster's helmets that would allow them to 'see' the villain. Maybe something acoustic based that could be translated into a visual readout?

Yeah, that seemed doable. And he'd see if he could incorporate Armsmaster's thermal scanner design into his own helmet while he was at it, just to cover his bases.

Oh, and apparently Armsmaster wanted to schedule some more sparring blocks so that he could test his predictive combat algorithms against a high end combat thinker.

Sure, why not? In fact...

Parker set aside his notepad, opened up his own assigned laptop and began to type rapidly as ideas about predictive software began to flow.

"Tinker fugue?" Brock asked rhetorically.

"Tinker fugue," Osborn confirmed. "Hope it's something good this time."

"I dunno. He came up with a damn good recipe for an artificial chocolate malt last time," Brock said with a grin. "Healthy, nutritious, and good tasting even! I hear Vista loves them."

"You didn't hear it from me, but I heard that Piggot likes them too," Osborn commented as the two watched their friend type faster and faster...